Category Archives: Prionic diseases

IRTA and CIBERNED sign an agreement to investigate prion diseases

Prions in the desert

Prion diseases or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies involve a quite diverse spectrum of hosts, from domestic animals such as cows with mad cow disease  (aka Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, BSE), wild animals such as cervids with Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) and even people who may suffer from  Creutzfeld Jackob Disease.

REDPRION is launched, a project to reinforce the control of human and animal prion diseases on both sides of the Pyrenees

A consortium consisting of five research centers and two companies from France and Spain launches the REDPRION cross-border Pyrenean project, worth € 2 million to develop innovative diagnostic tools and to identify therapeutic compounds for patients affected by a prion disease.

IRTA-CReSA signs up for ESCOLAB and Brain Awareness Week

IRTA-CReSA will investigate a possible relationship between cases of sporadic Creutzfeldt Jackob disease and prion diseases of goats and sheep

The State Program for the Promotion of Research, Scientific and Technical Excellence, State Subprogram of Knowledge Generation, within the framework of the State Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation 2013-2016 of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MEIC) has resolved to estimate the partial (a 56%) funding of the project presented by IRTA-CReSA with the title: “Study of a possible causal relationship between cases of sporadic Creutzfeldt Jackob disease and Scrapie of small ruminants“. Reference AGL2017-88353-P.

The dog that never lost it in a crazy world

Tim was staring astonished to Josefina the cow who, with her eyes wide open, was running away, scared, towards the barn, because she had seen a little mouse crossing the yard. On her way, poor thing, she stumbled and fell. With difficulty she got up again to enter her hiding place. Joseph, the farmer, had also seen the scene and sad, It had been seven years milking her every morning, decided that the time had come for Josefina.

Sane horses and unadapted prions

Time to talk about prions again, these enigmatic infectious agents that cause, among others, the mad cow disease.

Elucidation of the structure of an infectious prion

Prions, the agents that cause diseases such as Creutzfeltd Jakob disease in people or mad cow disease, are unconventional infectious agents. The main reason for this peculiarity is that, according to the most accepted theory nowadays, prions have no genetic material!