Proposal to establish WHO Reference reagents for In vitro assays of CJD specimens

Overview

Under the direction of the WHO Working Group on International Reference Materials for Diagnosis and Study of TSEs, the WHO has sponsored the preparation of candidate reference materials consisting of 10% w/v homogenates of brain from 1 normal human, 2 sporadic cases of CJD, and 1 case of vCJD. All cases were homozygous for methionine at codon 129 of the PrP gene. Six laboratories assayed the homogenates for relative concentration of PrP amyloid by Western blot. The ranking of the concentration was similar for five of the participants with concentrations 1 to 3 times greater than for the vCJD sample for one of the sCJD homogenates and 3 to 10 fold less than vCJD for the other sCJD sample.