A study using human cerebral organoids found that chronic wasting disease is unlikely to transmit from deer, elk, and moose to humans, reinforcing the strong species barrier observed in earlier research.barrier that blocks the transmission of chronic wasting disease from cervids—such as deer, elk, and moose—to humans.
A researcher holds a flask containing human cerebral organoids similar to those used in the CWD study. Credit: NIAID Over the next decade, 178 people in the U.K. who were thought to have eaten BSE-infected beef developed a new form of a human prion disease, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, and died. Researchers later determined that the disease had spread among cattle through feed tainted with infectious prion protein. The disease transmission path from feed to cattle to people terrified U.K. residents and put the world on alert for other prion diseases transmitted from animals to people, including CWD.
Human cerebral organoids are small spheres of human brain cells ranging in size from a poppy seed to a pea. Scientists grow organoids in dishes from human skin cells. The organization, structure, and electrical signaling of cerebral organoids are similar to brain tissue. They are currently the closest available laboratory model to the human brain. Because organoids can survive in a controlled environment for months, scientists use them to study nervous system diseases over time.