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France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes two lab workers - Science Magazine

France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes two lab workers - Science Magazine

France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes two lab workers - Science Magazine
Jul 28, 2021 3 mins, 18 secs

PARIS—Five public research institutions in France have imposed a 3-month moratorium on the study of prions—a class of misfolding, infectious proteins that cause fatal brain diseases—after a retired lab worker who handled prions in the past was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), the most common prion disease in humans.

Her family is now suing INRAE for manslaughter and endangering life; her illness had already led to tightened safety measures at French prion labs.

The aim of the moratorium, which affects nine labs, is to “study the possibility of a link with the [new patient’s] former professional activity and if necessary to adapt the preventative measures in force in research laboratories,” according to a joint press release issued by the five institutions yesterday.

“This is the right way to go in the circumstances,” says Ronald Melki, a structural biologist at a prion lab jointly operated by the French national research agency CNRS and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).

“It is always wise to ask questions about the whole working process when something goes wrong.” “The occurrence of these harsh diseases in two of our scientific colleagues clearly affects the whole prion community, which is a small ‘familial’ community of less than 1000 people worldwide,” Emmanuel Comoy, deputy director of CEA’s Unit of Prion Disorders and Related Infectious Agents, wrote in an email to Science.

Although prion research already has strict safety protocols, “it necessarily reinforces the awareness of the risk linked to these infectious agents,” he says.

In Jaumain’s case, there is little doubt she was infected on the job, according to a paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in 2020.

“Émilie started worrying about the accident as soon as it had happened, and mentioned it to every doctor she saw,” says her widower, Armel Houel.

The occurrence of these harsh diseases in two of our scientific colleagues clearly affects the whole prion community.

INRAE only recently admitted the likely link between Jaumain’s illness and the accident.

“We recognize, without ambiguity, the hypothesis of a correlation between Emilie Jaumain-Houel’s accident … and her infection with vCJD,” INRAE chair and CEO Philippe Mauguin wrote in a 24 June letter to an association created by friends and colleagues to publicize Jaumain’s case and lobby for improvements in lab safety.

Another technician at the same lab had a fingerprick accident with prions in 2005, but has not developed vCJD symptoms so far, Bensimhon says.

“It is shocking that no precautionary measures were taken then to ensure such an accident never happened again,” he says.

After Jaumain’s diagnosis, “We contacted all the research prion labs in France to suggest they check their safety procedures and remind staff about the importance of respecting them,” says Stéphane Haïk, a neuroscientist at the Paris Brain Institute at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital who helped diagnose Jaumain and is the corresponding author on the paper.

A team of experts from the five research agencies is due to submit proposals for a guide to good practice in prion research to the French government at the end of this year.

The scientific community has long recognized that handling prions is dangerous and an occupational risk for neuropathologists, says neuropathologist Adriano Aguzzi of the University of Zurich.

Aguzzi declined to comment on the French CJD cases, but told Science his lab never handles human or bovine prions for research purposes, only for diagnostics.

“We conduct research only on mouse-adapted sheep prions, which have never been shown to be infectious to humans,” Aguzzi says.

In a 2011 paper, his team reported that prions can spread through aerosols, at least in mice, which “may warrant re-thinking on prion biosafety guidelines in research and diagnostic laboratories,” they wrote.

The moratorium will “obviously” cause delays in research, but given the very long incubation periods in prion diseases, the impact of a 3-month hiatus will be limited, Comoy says.

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