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Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases, University of Alberta logo

Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases, University of Alberta

The Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases is a multi-faculty research centre of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, not a separate legal body and not a clinic. Work began in 2007, and the Alberta Prion Research Institute, a provincial funding body that ran from 2005 to March 2022, helped create it and paid for project grants. It sits in the Brain and Aging Research Building with more than 6,000 square feet of enhanced level 2 biocontainment laboratory space. David Westaway was director in 2014; the current director is Holger Wille, a structural biologist in Biochemistry with a long record of co-authorship with Stanley Prusiner. Eight core faculty are listed. The human prion disease thread runs mainly through two laboratories: Valerie Sim, a neurologist, works on sporadic CJD subtypes, VPSPr and RT-QuIC based testing with the Public Health Agency of Canada and the US National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center, and Wille works on structure-based vaccines, including CJD Foundation funded work in mice carrying familial or human prion protein. The rest of the centre covers chronic wasting disease, Alzheimer, Parkinson and ALS. Current funders shown are CIHR, Alberta Innovates, RDAR, NSERC and CFI.

Key facts

  • The centre is a University of Alberta research centre backed by the faculties of Medicine and Dentistry, Science, and Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences, located at 204 Brain and Aging Research Building, Edmonton; its only public contact routes are a telephone number and faculty email addresses.
  • Work at the centre began in 2007, with a stated focus on the biology of prion diseases, on reducing the impact of BSE and chronic wasting disease, and on human neurodegenerative diseases caused by protein misfolding.
  • Holger Wille, faculty in Biochemistry, is listed as director on his official profile and was named director in a university news story dated 9 March 2026; David Westaway, professor of neurology, was named director in January 2014 and is not on the 2026 faculty lists.
  • Core faculty are McKenzie, Wille, Aiken, Woodside, Kar, Mok, Allison and Sim, with five affiliated faculty; the research page lists six intramural principal investigator laboratories.
  • The facility offers more than 6,000 square feet of custom biocontainment laboratory space rated enhanced level 2; no higher containment level is stated.
  • The Alberta Prion Research Institute helped create the centre and gave peer-reviewed project operating grants; it closed on 31 March 2022, and Alberta Innovates now funds prion science mainly through a chronic wasting disease programme that recently invested 1.25 million Canadian dollars.
  • Current funders shown on the home page are CIHR, Alberta Innovates, RDAR, NSERC and the Canada Foundation for Innovation; earlier pages also name Genome Canada and Genome Alberta.
  • The CJD Foundation has funded centre investigators six times between 2016 and 2023: Sim in 2016 on combination therapy for human prion disease, Wille in 2020 on prion vaccines in mouse models of familial prion disease and in 2021 on passive immunotherapy in mice expressing human prion protein, Sim in 2021 on CJD strain spread in slice cultures, Cortez and Sim in 2022 on aggregate size and clinical phenotype, and Nemani and Sim in 2023 on VPSPr.
  • The Sim laboratory works with national surveillance groups: a June 2026 paper on the sporadic CJD MV1 subtype with the National Microbiology Laboratory of the Public Health Agency of Canada and the US NPDPSC, an August 2025 VPSPr mass spectrometry paper with Case Western and NPDPSC authors, and a 2026 paper on expanded EP-QuIC testing for sporadic CJD that improved surveillance in a local area of Canada.
  • Sim has a long co-authorship with Byron Caughey of NIAID Rocky Mountain Laboratories on prion seeding assays, and a 2021 case report on modified RT-QuIC in placental tissue joined the centre with Rocky Mountain Laboratories and the Colorado State Prion Research Center.
  • Wille's laboratory designs structure-based vaccines; a March 2026 university story reported an alpha-synuclein vaccine candidate that extended survival of mice by up to 42 percent, funded by Weston Brain Institute, the Michael J. Fox Foundation and Alberta sources, with no human trial yet.
  • Historical collaboration ties include Wille with Stanley Prusiner on prion structure up to 2015 and Westaway with Gerold Schmitt-Ulms of Toronto on prion protein biology from 2008 to 2015; McKenzie co-authored the 2024 North American chronic wasting disease state-of-the-science review with Rodrigo Morales and Caughey.
  • The centre offers no clinical, diagnostic or referral service to families on any page opened; the public offer is research, seminars, courses, a publications list and a giving page.

Timeline

  1. 2005Alberta Prion Research Institute starts funding prion science in Alberta; it later helps create the centre.
  2. 2007Research work at the centre begins.
  3. 2014University news names David Westaway as director in a story on prion protein quality control in brain cells.
  4. 2016Valerie Sim receives a CJD Foundation grant on combination therapies for human prion disease.
  5. 2020Holger Wille receives CJD Foundation support for prion vaccines in transgenic mouse models of familial prion disease.
  6. 2021CJD Foundation grants to Wille on passive immunotherapy in mice expressing human prion protein and to Sim on CJD strain spread in slice cultures.
  7. 2021Prion paper on modified RT-QuIC in placental tissue with Colorado State and Rocky Mountain Laboratories co-authors.
  8. 2022Cortez and Sim receive the Jeffrey A. Smith Memorial grant on prion aggregate size and clinical phenotype.
  9. 2022The Alberta Prion Research Institute ends operations.
  10. 2023Nemani and Sim receive a CJD Foundation grant on oligomeric prions in VPSPr.
  11. 2025VPSPr mass spectrometry paper with Case Western and NPDPSC authors.
  12. 2025Centre news reports McKenzie contributing to a National Academies report on chronic wasting disease.
  13. 2026University news names Wille as director and reports his alpha-synuclein vaccine results in mice.
  14. 2026Paper on the sporadic CJD MV1 subtype with the Public Health Agency of Canada and the NPDPSC.
  15. 2026Centre news on nanoparticles for Alzheimer disease led by Kar.
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