The Biomedical Research Institute of Bellvitge (Idibell) denied authorization to three scientific projects with prions, a type of protein that can cause neurodegenerative diseases, because there are no adequate safety conditions in its facilities, reported yesterday Gabriel Capellà, director of the institute.
However, hundreds of biological samples of unknown origin have appeared in an Idibell laboratory where Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, caused by prions, was being investigated, and these infectious proteins have been identified in some of the samples analyzed , as El País reported yesterday.
One of the scientists who ran the laboratory, Franc Llorens, died in July 2022 at the age of 45, presumably after contracting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Llorens’ disease, which arrived at Idibell in 2018 from the University of Göttingen (Germany), and the discovery of the potentially infectious unregistered samples, have caused concern among the people who worked in the laboratory, who fear that they have been exposed to high-risk situations without adequate protection.
The samples are now kept at the Center for Research in Animal Health (CReSA), on the campus of the Autonomous University (UAB), which has a high-security laboratory to work with dangerous viruses and prions. There is an ongoing investigation to clarify how and when they arrived in Idibell, and where they came from. Once it is finished, towards the end of the year or the beginning of 2024, it will be decided whether Idibell’s security protocols need to be modified.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a rapidly evolving degenerative neurological pathology. It is fatal in 100% of cases and there is no treatment to slow its progression. It is characterized by rapid deterioration of brain tissue caused by a prion, a defective protein that spreads like an infection. Most cases are sporadic. Only a minority are due to a contagion.
It was the Idibell biosecurity committee that did not authorize three projects to research with prions before Llorens’ arrival, Gabriel Capellà reported to La Vanguardia yesterday. In December 2018, shortly after the researcher joined, Idibell signed a collaboration agreement with CReSA to be able to carry out this type of research with the appropriate security conditions.
Llorens stopped working in November 2020, when he started having neurological symptoms that could correspond to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Idibell has no record of his diagnosis.
In December 2020, biological samples of unknown origin were found preserved at 80 degrees below zero in the Llorens laboratory. The samples were not registered in the laboratory’s databases, which was an anomaly. It was neuropathologist Isidre Ferrer, head of Llorens in Idibell, who discovered them and immediately informed the management of the institute.
The laboratory was closed a few hours later and decontaminated in January 2021. The samples were then sent to CReSA. Many were from cerebrospinal fluid of people with Creutzfeldt-Jakobi and other neurodegenerative diseases, and others came from animals.
Idibell decided to address the case jointly with the University of Barcelona, ??owner of the laboratory, and the Center for Biomedical Network Research (Ciber) of the Ministry of Science, which had hired Llorens.
At the end of 2022, two years after the samples were found, part of them was sent to the CIC BioGune center in the Basque Country, which has prion analysis technology. The result of the analysis confirmed in March 2023 the presence of prions, which implies that one of the other nine people working in the laboratory could have been at risk of contagion if they handled samples with prions without knowing it. With the information available so far, it is not clear whether experiments with prions were carried out at Idibell or not.