Scientists develop new tests that identify lethal prion strains quickly and accurately

One of the new in vitro tests, called the Standard Scrapie Cell Assay, measures prion infectivity levels in a highly accurate and extremely rapid way, producing results in less than two weeks. The second test, called the Cell Panel Assay, allows researchers to quickly distinguish between several prion strains in various cells lines. Using the new assays, the scientists were able to show that four different cell lines exhibited widely different responses to four different strains of the infectious protein particles.