Neuroscientist Franc Llorens, who researched Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and died in July 2022 at the age of 45, allegedly after contracting the disease, was responsible for personally introducing high-risk biological samples in the laboratory of the Biomedical Research Institute of Bellvitge (Idibell), without registering his entry and without notifying his superiors. The information has been confirmed to La Vanguardia by two independent sources who are aware of what happened at that scientific site and which is now the subject of a police investigation.
The scientist, moreover, conducted experiments with some of these potentially infectious samples despite the fact that the laboratory did not meet, and does not meet, the appropriate safety conditions, and was therefore not authorized for those experiments. The dead man’s work not only put the other scientists at risk, but also the maintenance or cleaning staff who accessed the laboratory.
The samples corresponded to brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid from people and other animals affected by neurodegenerative diseases such as, among others, Creutzfeldt-Jakob. Remains that came mainly from the universities of Gotinga, in Germany, where Llorens had worked from 2013 to 2018, and Coimbra, in Portugal.
The presence of these samples in one of the freezers of laboratory 1414 was discovered at the end of 2020, when Llorens applied for medical leave after developing neurological symptoms characteristic of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The director of the laboratory, Isidre Ferrer, accessed one of these refrigerators, saw samples with an unequivocal note on the bottle, CJD, which are the initials of the disease in English, and knew, from the story of the other scientists of the research group led by Llorens and of the notes on the laboratory’s computers, which could contain prions.
Both the management of Idibell and the University of Barcelona (UB), owner of the space where the laboratory is located, were informed of the find. The Center for Biomedical Research on the Internet (Ciber), of the Ministry of Science, was also informed that it had hired Llorens to return to Spain and work at Idibell. None of the three institutions related to the serious incident, Idibell, UB and Ciber, have publicly clarified why two years had to pass between the finding of the potentially dangerous samples in Llorens’ laboratory and their shipment to the CIC BioGune del País center Basque to analyze them. It was in that laboratory that it was confirmed that they had prions, and therefore could be infectious.
The neuroscientist had remained affiliated with the University of Göttingen after joining Idibell in 2018. A common practice in the scientific community, in which many researchers have dual affiliations. Llorens went to Göttingen several times between 2018 and 2020 and continued to sign his scientific papers in collaboration with the team of Inga Zerr, his head in Germany. He also initialed some of the articles in collaboration with neuroscientists from the University of Coïmbra.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob is a rapidly evolving neurodegenerative disease caused by prions, a type of protein that destroys the brain tissue and holes it like a sponge – which is why it is classified as a spongiform encephalopathy. There is no treatment to slow its progression and it causes death in 100% of patients, usually about six months after diagnosis. The vast majority of cases are sporadic.
It can be contagious in exceptional cases if a person is exposed to material from the nervous system or cornea affected by prions. But it is not transmitted between people by respiratory, skin, sexual or blood transfusions.
The Bellvitge hospital specialized in prion research following the mad cow crisis in the nineties and continued with this line of research once the emergency was resolved. It enabled a laboratory with a biosecurity level 3 (on a scale of 1 to 4), which allowed samples containing prions to be handled under high security conditions. Franc Llorens had already worked in this Bellvitge laboratory before leaving for Germany in 2013, under the direction of neuropathologist Isidre Ferrer.
The biosafety laboratory in Bellvitge was closed when Ferrer retired from his job at the hospital after turning 65 in 2016. At that time it was decided to transfer part of the prion samples to the Clínic hospital, and the rest, at the IRTA-Cresa institute, on the campus of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ??in Bellaterra. There were none left in Bellvitge.
Ferrer’s research group settled at the Idibell institute, since, as a professor, he could delay his retirement from the university until he was 70 and continue researching until then. That was where Llorens landed when he returned from Germany in 2018. Llorens, who had a brilliant scientific career and was to succeed Ferrer as head of the research group, had complete freedom to research without supervision.
At that time, it had been agreed that Idibell’s investigations with prions would be carried out at the IRTA-Cresa facilities, an agreement that was published in the Official Gazette of the State. If the Idibell team received samples with prions to investigate, they had to send them to IRTA-Cresa without unsealing them. It was not forbidden to keep the samples in the Idibell, but you could not work there.
After Llorens fell ill, biological samples were discovered that had been opened in a freezer in his laboratory. Some had a label with the initials CJD. People who worked under Llorens stated that they had manipulated those samples and that they had not been informed of the risk they ran. Three years later, at least one of these people is still on sick leave and undergoing psychological treatment.
