Protein amplification technology: New advances in human prion disease diagnosis

Establishment of a Special Platform for the Research of Prion and the Diagnosis of Human Prion Disease - China's Studies

The studies of prions and prion disease usually need many special platforms and techniques that differ from those for classical microbes. Search of new biomarkers and establishment of new methods for the diagnosis of human prion diseases are priorities in the field of prion study.

Application of α-Syn Real-Time Quaking-Induced Conversion for Brain and Skin Specimens of the Chinese Patients With Parkinson’s Disease

The real-time quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC) assay has been developed and used as an in vitro diagnostic tool for Parkinson’s disease (PD). In this study, we established α-Syn RT-QuIC using recombinant human α-Syn as the substrate. All 5 brain homogenates of neuropathological PD cases and 13 skin homogenates of clinical PD cases showed positive results, whereas all the samples of negative controls remain negative. Meantime, randomly selected 6 skin samples of PD cases and 6 skin samples of sCJD cases showed negative in opposite prion RT-QuIC and α-Syn RT-QuIC. Our α-Syn RT-QuIC showed dose-dependent manner between the lag times and peak ThT fluorescent values. Additionally, the detecting limitation was about 10^–7 dilution for brain tissues and 10^–6 for skins. Those data indicate a reliable specificity and good sensitivity of the established α-Syn RT-QuIC in identifying and amplifying the misfolded α-Syn in brain and skin tissues of patients with PD.