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Alberta Prion Research Institute

The Alberta Prion Research Institute (APRI, also called the Prion Institute) was a provincial research funder set up by the Government of Alberta in 2005 after BSE was found in a Canadian cow in 2003. It paid for prion and protein misfolding research in Alberta through project grants, infrastructure, trainee support, industry partnership grants and collaboration grants with researchers outside the province. From 1 January 2010 its staff worked under Alberta Innovates Bio Solutions, and later under Alberta Innovates. It helped create the University of Alberta Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases. Most of its documented spending was on BSE and chronic wasting disease, including a large primate study of CWD risk to humans, but it also co-funded basic and human prion disease research, for example work on infectious oligomers from a genetic prion disease. APRI ended operations on 31 March 2022. Alberta Innovates now funds prion science mainly through a chronic wasting disease programme.

Key facts

  • APRI was launched by the Alberta government in 2005 in response to the 2003 discovery of BSE in Canada.
  • The size of the founding commitment is reported as 35 million dollars by one source and 38 million dollars by another; an evaluation excerpt gives 46.7 million dollars invested in projects, infrastructure and personnel from April 2005 to August 2015.
  • Its stated mandate was to build and support world-class prion and protein folding research capacity in Alberta, produce research useful for knowledge, industry and policy, and train highly qualified people.
  • By late 2010 APRI said it had funded 45 research projects worth more than 30 million dollars and supported more than 130 Alberta students and young professionals; by 2018 it said it had supported more than 160 prion research projects.
  • From 1 January 2010 APRI staff moved under Alberta Innovates Bio Solutions as part of a merger of ten provincial research bodies into four Alberta Innovates agencies.
  • APRI took part in creating the University of Alberta Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases and supplied peer-reviewed project operating grants to it; a 2014 centre study on prion protein quality control was funded in part by APRI.
  • Programmes included the New Collaborations Program (up to 100,000 Canadian dollars for up to two years, Alberta researchers with partners outside Alberta) and the IDeal programme (up to 500,000 Canadian dollars for one to three years, cost shared with a private sector partner), covering TSE biology, surveillance, diagnostics and protein misfolding in neurodegenerative disease.
  • In 2007 APRI granted 3.5 million euros to an international study of whether CWD can pass to humans, using macaques, coordinated from Lethbridge with the University of Calgary and including German, French and US partners such as the NIH laboratory in Hamilton, Montana.
  • Health Canada reported in April 2017 that initial results of an APRI and Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency funded project led by a CFIA scientist showed CWD transmission to macaques by brain and oral routes; it judged the findings not yet peer reviewed and kept its precautionary food advice unchanged.
  • APRI partnered with the federal PrioNet Canada network from 2005, and the two co-funded 1.6 million Canadian dollars of BSE and CWD projects in Alberta and Manitoba in 2009.
  • APRI is listed as a funder of a 2020 study by ISS Rome, the University of Alberta and the University of Zurich that isolated infectious non-fibrillar oligomeric prions from a genetic prion disease, under grant 201600029, and of earlier University of Alberta prion protein structure papers with Aguzzi and Schmitt-Ulms as co-authors.
  • APRI ended operations on 31 March 2022; Alberta Innovates says it still funds prion science through the Agricultural Funding Consortium and targeted programmes, chiefly a Chronic Wasting Disease Research Program that recently invested 1.25 million Canadian dollars.

Timeline

  1. 2005APRI created by the Government of Alberta, per the 2016 evaluation excerpt.
  2. 2005Trade press reports APRI partnership with the new federal PrioNet Canada network.
  3. 2007APRI grant of 3.5 million euros for an international primate study of CWD risk to humans is announced.
  4. 2009PrioNet Canada and APRI announce 1.6 million Canadian dollars for three BSE and CWD projects.
  5. 2010APRI staff move under Alberta Innovates Bio Solutions.
  6. 2010APRI International Young Researcher Prize awarded to a Dartmouth researcher.
  7. 2014University of Alberta prion study funded in part by APRI is reported.
  8. 2016Summative evaluation of APRI published by Science-Metrix.
  9. 2017Health Canada risk opinion cites initial results of the APRI co-funded macaque CWD study.
  10. 2018APRI funding information session at the University of Lethbridge.
  11. 2020Brain paper on oligomeric prions from a genetic prion disease lists APRI grant support.
  12. 2022APRI ends operations.
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