Epidemiology of Chronic Wasting Disease: PrPres Detection, Shedding, and Environmental Contamination

Chronic wasting disease CWD of deer and elk is unique among the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. Our long-term goal is to better understand the epidemiology of CWD and thus develop strategies for management and control. The specific goals of these studies are to develop sensitive assays for PrPres as a marker for infectivity and use these techniques to monitor the dynamics and modes of shedding of PrPres from orally infected mule and white-tailed deer and elk. Finally these techniques will be applied to investigating the nature of environmental contamination that may be associated with CWD transmission. Protease resistant prion protein from brains of CWD affected deer and elk PrPres and cellular PrPc were purified and used in a variety of detection assays. PrPres was detected using antibody-based techniques which although substantially more sensitive than any current assay still need improvement. Deer and elk have been and infected orally to determine CWD shedding in vivo. We have not identified several protein biomarkers as indicators of prion infection in urine from deer and elk. As the grant ends we have established a very large bank of various deer and elk tissues and fluids starting prior to infection and periodically throughout the infection.