Notice Board

The information sessions will provide you with the opportunity to learn more about the current

funding available from the Alberta Prion Research Institute and to ask questions of Prion Institute

staff.

Prion diseases are infectious, transmissible, and fatal neurodegenerative diseases affecting animals

and humans, causing great economic turmoil in the process. The discovery of a Canadian cow with

the prion disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in 2003 caused extensive turmoil,

closing trade borders and spurring great public food safety and health concerns. In response to these

events, millions of dollars of support from the Alberta government launched the Alberta Prion

Research Institute in 2005. Since 2005 the Prion Institute has supported over 160 prion research

projects. Other human neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease appear to have

aspects of pathobiology that are like prion diseases. Research on the prion‐like aspects of these

diseases as well as animal and human prion diseases themselves are of interest to the Prion Institute.