The Generative Brain
Protein macro-assembly and prion diseases team (MAP2), Molecular Virology and Immunology unit (VIM, UMR 0892), INRAE Jouy-en-Josas logo

Protein macro-assembly and prion diseases team (MAP2), Molecular Virology and Immunology unit (VIM, UMR 0892), INRAE Jouy-en-Josas

This is the prion laboratory of INRAE at the Jouy-en-Josas campus near Paris. It is one of six research teams in the Molecular Virology and Immunology unit, UMR 0892, a joint unit of INRAE and the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin within Universite Paris-Saclay. The French team name is Macro-Assemblages Proteiques et Maladies a Prions, abbreviated MAP2; the unit's English pages call it Protein macro-assembly and Prion diseases. Its work is basic and methodological rather than clinical: how prion structure is copied during replication, what the smallest infectious assembly is, species barriers and transmission from animals to humans, prion inactivation on medical devices, and new laboratory tools, using humanised transgenic mice, cell models and in vitro amplification. Its most directly diagnostic output is a 2025 paper introducing recombinant human PrP carrying the E219K polymorphism as an RT-QuIC substrate that amplified six sporadic CJD subtypes and variant CJD, and separated variant from sporadic CJD by reaction lag time. That work was presented at the French national prion study day in June 2025 with co-authors from Lyon and Paris.

Key facts

  • The laboratory is a team inside VIM, UMR 0892, listed by the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin as a joint unit with the INRAE animal health department and a founding member of the Paris-Saclay animal sciences institute; the unit director is Human Rezaei, with two deputy directors.
  • The unit's French page lists six teams and names the prion team Macro-Assemblages Proteiques et Maladies a Prions (MAP2); the unit's English site lists the same team as Protein macro-assembly and Prion diseases among its research groups.
  • The team page names two co-leaders, Davy Martin and Pierre Sibille, and lists 14 members: seven scientists including the two leaders, four research assistants and technicians, and three PhD students.
  • The team's stated themes are the transfer of structural information during mammalian prion replication, neurotoxicity of misfolded proteins, the minimal structural change that starts replication, the link between infectivity and the size of PrPSc assemblies, inhibitory ligands, prion transmission from animals to humans, links with other amyloid diseases, and new methods and tools; models named are transgenic mice and cell models.
  • In July 2025 the team published in Microbiology Spectrum that recombinant human PrP with the E219K polymorphism on a methionine 129 background works as an RT-QuIC substrate, amplifying the sporadic CJD subtypes MM1, MV1, VV1, MM2-c, MV2 and VV2 and variant CJD, with no spontaneous conversion in uninfected controls over 40 to 50 hours.
  • In that study, lag time separated variant CJD from every sporadic subtype tested, in both mouse passaged and patient brain material, and in mouse material also separated MM2-c from other subtypes and MM1 from MV1; the authors present this as a step towards typing the strain in a patient before death, while noting that only brain homogenates were tested and that cerebrospinal fluid and blood remain to be tried.
  • The same study used brain homogenates from humanised tg650 mice expressing human PrP with methionine at codon 129, serially passaged four to five times, alongside human brain material; estimated detection limits were around 1 femtogram of PrPres for several strains and about 30 femtograms for variant CJD.
  • Human samples for that study came from the UK NIBSC CJD Resource Centre and, for four sporadic subtypes and a control brain, from collaborators at the Lyon university hospitals and the Paris Brain Institute through the French national reference centre for unconventional transmissible agents and the French national neuropathology network for CJD.
  • Funding acknowledged in the 2025 paper is a French medicines agency young scientist grant, a Fundacion Ramon Areces postdoctoral fellowship and a French National Research Agency grant (ANR-21-CE15-0011-01).
  • The work was presented as a talk on discrimination of human prion strains by RT-QuIC at the 10th French national study day on prion diseases and other proteinopathies, held at the Paris Brain Institute on 19 June 2025, with the INRAE Jouy-en-Josas team and Lyon and Paris co-authors.
  • The team's publication list for 2024 and 2025 includes two September 2024 papers on prion inactivation, one using protein misfolding cyclic amplification to test decontamination of reusable medical devices as an alternative to animal bioassay and one on optimised procedures for inactivating human prions, a February 2024 paper on the zoonotic potential of atypical scrapie prions in humanised mice compared with sporadic CJD, and a May 2025 EFSA biological hazards panel opinion on TSE hazards from incineration of category 1 animal by-products.
  • A 2024 preprint version of the E219K substrate work was posted on bioRxiv before the journal publication; the search record gives the preprint identifier 2024.07.31.605973.

Timeline

  1. 2009First publication date recorded on the team's research page on the unit site.
  2. 2024Paper on the zoonotic potential of atypical scrapie prions in humanised mice, compared with sporadic CJD.
  3. 2024Preprint on human PrP E219K as an RT-QuIC substrate posted on bioRxiv.
  4. 2024Two papers in Journal of Hospital Infection on prion inactivation and on PMCA as an alternative to animal bioassay for decontamination testing.
  5. 2025Microbiology Spectrum manuscript on the E219K substrate received.
  6. 2025Same manuscript accepted.
  7. 2025RT-QuIC strain discrimination work presented at the 10th French prion study day at the Paris Brain Institute.
  8. 2025E219K RT-QuIC paper published, DOI 10.1128/spectrum.00292-25.
  9. 2025Team publications page last modified.
  10. 2026Unit page on the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin site last updated, naming the six teams and the director.
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