Twenty-five years of the United Kingdom Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy Tissue Archive

Introduction:

Classical-Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (C-BSE) was first diagnosed in 1986, leading to an epidemic in the United Kingdom during the 1980s to 2000s. Over 184,000 clinically suspect BSE cattle were culled between 1986 and 2015, and since then cases of C-BSE, have progressively declined year on year after the introduction of the reinforced feed ban, blocking the addition of animal protein to livestock feed.

Objectives:

The C-BSE epidemic in the United Kingdom brought with it the opportunity to create a unique, purpose-built repository of reference material from C-BSE, clinically and sub-clinically positive animals. The archive holds frozen and formalin-fixed material not only from C-BSE cases but also from Classical and Atypical Scrapie positive small ruminants.

Methods:

This archive holds over one million samples of known origin and clinical history from bovine, ovine and caprine TSE positive cases.

Results:

For 25 years, APHA has provided reference material to the international scientific community and collaborated on prion disease research. It has assisted the progression of molecular analysis from histology to immunohistochemistry for disease pathogenesis and from Mini blot to Western blot for strain typing and novel tests such as PMCA and RT-QuIC.  Reference samples from the TSE archive have been integral for External Quality Assurance programs for TSE diagnostic tests worldwide.

Conclusions:

The material within the UK TSE archive continues to be of importance not only for research and assay development but also for the proficiency testing of reference laboratories worldwide.

Funded by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra).