Cargando…

Development of a sensitive real-time quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC) assay for application in prion-infected blood

Efforts to prevent human-to-human transmission of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) by contaminated blood would be aided by the development of a sensitive diagnostic test that could be routinely used to screen blood donations. As blood samples from vCJD patients are extremely rare, here we de...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Thomas, Charlotte M., Salamat, M. Khalid F., de Wolf, Christopher, McCutcheon, Sandra, Blanco, A. Richard Alejo, Manson, Jean C., Hunter, Nora, Houston, E. Fiona
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10621866/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37917783
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293845
Descripción
Sumario:Efforts to prevent human-to-human transmission of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) by contaminated blood would be aided by the development of a sensitive diagnostic test that could be routinely used to screen blood donations. As blood samples from vCJD patients are extremely rare, here we describe the optimisation of real-time quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC) for detection of PrP(Sc) (misfolded prion protein, a marker of prion infection) in blood samples from an established large animal model of vCJD, sheep experimentally infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Comparative endpoint titration experiments with RT-QuIC, miniaturized bead protein misfolding cyclic amplification (mb-PMCA) and intracerebral inoculation of a transgenic mouse line expressing sheep PrP (tgOvARQ), demonstrated highly sensitive detection of PrP(Sc) by RT-QuIC in a reference sheep brain homogenate. Upon addition of a capture step with iron oxide beads, the RT-QuIC assay was able to detect PrP(Sc) in whole blood samples from BSE-infected sheep up to two years before disease onset. Both RT-QuIC and mb-PMCA also demonstrated sensitive detection of PrP(Sc) in a reference vCJD-infected human brain homogenate, suggesting that either assay may be suitable for application to human blood samples. Our results support the further development and evaluation of RT-QuIC as a diagnostic or screening test for vCJD.