Faculty, Staff and Student Publications
Language
English
Publication Date
12-20-2025
Journal
The Journal of Infectious Diseases
DOI
10.1093/infdis/jiaf205
PMID
40272929
PMCID
PMC12718057
PubMedCentral® Posted Date
4-24-2025
PubMedCentral® Full Text Version
Post-print
Abstract
Infectious prions readily adhere to common surfaces, retain infectivity, and are highly resistant to conventional decontamination, posing significant biosafety challenges in the medical and research environments. Recent occupational exposures underscore the urgency of improving safety measures. Here, we describe an approach combining foam-swab surface sampling and protein misfolding cyclic amplification to enhance prion surveillance. Our results demonstrate the ability to detect prions most relevant to human health directly from contaminated surfaces, even at 100 million-fold dilutions of the brain. We applied our method to assess the completeness of prion decontamination and show that high prion quantities can resist even approved inactivation methods. Finally, we applied our method in 2 real-world scenarios including the decommissioning and repurposing of a prion research facility and the active surveillance of residual prion contamination in an operational laboratory. Our methodology offers a robust and efficient tool for detecting residual prion contamination, enhancing laboratory safety.
Keywords
Prions, Prion Diseases, Humans, Animals, Laboratories, Decontamination, Containment of Biohazards, prions, laboratory safety, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, CJD, PMCA
Published Open-Access
yes
Recommended Citation
Gorski, Damian; Schauer, Isaac; Spicker, Kane; et al., "Development of a Procedure for Prion Surveillance in the Laboratory Setting" (2025). Faculty, Staff and Student Publications. 3536.
https://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/uthmed_docs/3536