In prion research, decontamination is an important issue. The misfolded prions that cause mad cow and chronic wasting are difficult to destroy by traditional means.
According to Dr. Norm Neumann of the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta, experiments with advanced oxidation and ozone treatment may hold some promise. “The pathological disease, as we know it, is caused by a misfolded protein causing another normal protein to misfold. And so there’s this chain reaction that goes on. Some of the work that we’re doing demonstrates that ozone can actually destroy that protein enough to inactivate the templating properties or the pathological process that we see.
“We’ve seen that in a test tube – and the big question for us now is can we begin to understand this and model it in an engineering context and understand complete destruction of this? Then we must cross validate that information in animal infectivity models.”
Dr. Neumann suggests that, if the advanced ozone treatment works, we may one day be able to dispose of prion infected material through something as simple as composting.