Canada
The Science Seminar Series is a regular venue for sharing information relevant to Alberta’s environmental monitoring and science programs, hosted by the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS), Alberta Environment and Protected Areas (EPA).
The series is an open forum intended to encourage connections in the EPA/GoA science-policy interface through sharing of research findings and program outcomes in understandable and accessible ways. The OCS aims to host two seminars per month with speakers from across EPA and external collaborators on relevant and emerging topics, such as ecosystems and change, fish and wildlife conservation, climate variability and change, condition and sustainability of water resources, and chemical and biological contaminants in the environment from a multiple evidence-based approach.
Today, Dr. Holger Wille will be presenting on Developing a Vaccine for Chronic Wasting Disease
Abstract: Chronic Wasting Disease is caused by an infectious prion protein, an unusual pathogen that consists of a misfolded protein only. Because the cellular (healthy) prion protein is a self-protein, it is more challenging to produce a vaccine without risking an auto-immune response. Insights into the structure and misfolding of the infectious form of the prion protein allowed us to create several structure-based prion vaccines and one of these proved to be very effective in delaying disease onset in a mouse model of another rare genetic prion disease: Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker disease. We are currently testing the efficacy of our prion vaccine against Chronic Wasting Disease in rodents, white-tailed deer, and Rocky Mountain elk.