The expert in syndrome of Creutzfeld-Jakob who died of this disease in July 2022 in Barcelona never had permission to do research with prions in the laboratories of the Bellvitge campus, in which he worked from 2012. However, the researcher was carrying out experiments with those infectious proteins. It is not clear where exactly he carried out these tests. This leaves open the possibility that he was infected in Barcelona a decade ago, when he worked in the Bellvitge Hospital.
In that period, the researcher, Franc Llorens, was part of the group of Isidre Ferrer, director of the Institute of Neuropathology of the Bellvitge Hospital. His assignment to that center lasted from January to December 2012. Ferrer’s laboratory “was not a research laboratory, but rather a diagnostic laboratory. We are not aware that research was carried out there. nor was it authorized”, say hospital sources.
The expert carried out research in 2012 when he worked in a laboratory not authorized to carry out these experiments, which opens the door to being infected then.
However, there are scientific publications signed by Llorens with affiliation to that center that deal with prion diseases. For example, the article “PrP mRNA and protein expression in brain and PrPc in CSF in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease MM1 and VV2”published in 2013 in the magazine ‘Prion.
Where did you do the experiments?
In this work, samples of infected human brain and cerebrospinal fluid with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The research reads: “All biochemical studies were carried out in biosafety rooms of P3 level”, in reference to the high level required to work with these samples. However, it does not detail where.
There is no record of the presence of Ferrer’s team at that time in two other Catalan research institutions, external to the Bellvitge campus, that have P3 laboratories: the MAGGOT (Centre d’Investigació en Sanitat Animal) and the IDIBAPS (August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute, associated with the Clínic).
Only one co-author of this article, the German Inga Zerr, He is from outside Catalonia, but Llorens was not yet attached to his center (the Medical University of Göttingen, which has refused to answer EL PERIÓDICO’s questions).
Did Llorens then work with prions in Ferrer’s laboratory without having permission? “Ferrer did not inform either Occupational Risk Prevention or human resources that the researcher in question had to work in his laboratory at the Bellvitge Hospital and therefore we can’t know”, respond sources from IDIBELL (Institut d’Investigació Biomèdica de Bellvitge, attached to that hospital).
Samples kept for two years
After his stay in GermanyFrom 2013 to 2018, Llorens returned to Barcelona, at IDIBELL. Meanwhile, Ferrer’s laboratory at the Bellvitge Hospital had been closed in 2016 following the scientist’s retirement, according to institute sources. In 2019, Llorens finally gained access to a suitable laboratory, CRESA, thanks to a agreement signed between IDIBELL and that center.
“With the signing of the agreement, samples of the group entered [de Llorens]. Later, the team brought samples into the facilities to work with them. Llorens did not come to work personally, but members of his team did, they add.
After the first symptoms of the disease, in the fall of 2020, samples with infectious prions in the Llorens laboratory at IDIBELL. He remains to explain why he kept them and if he worked with them there, while his group brought tissues and handled them safely at CRESA.
Those samples include cerebrospinal fluid, plasma and brain tissue, according to CRESA sources, where they were rushed after the discovery. This discovery, which could have shed light on Llorens’ illness, was stored in the CRESA refrigerators during two yearsuntil December 2022.
Long waiting period
“They have not been manipulated. CRESA has only guarded them. They have been saved until the moment when the University of Barcelona (UB) and IDIBELL made the selection to be analyzed,” explain sources from the center.
During this period Llorens was diagnosed at the Clínic, a diagnosis which entails the cerebrospinal fluid puncture. He later died without undergoing surgery. autopsy, according to informed sources. The autopsy was not ordered by a judge, since there were no complaints, but rather requested by the Health Department and the family had the last word.
“A shocking and unforgivable delay”
Those were missed opportunities to clarify the matter. “Crossing the data“, it would be seen if the prion protein aggregates present in the samples from his laboratory are those that were in his nervous system,” says a prion expert.
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“The delay of the institutions in reacting is shocking and unforgivable“They should have known what had happened in France,” he says. Elise Levyresearcher at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and secretary of the Emilys Association, in memory of two French laboratory workers who died from prion contamination.
Levy is skeptical about the internal investigation launched by the UB, owner of the Llorens laboratory. “Based on our experience, it is clear that it has to be carried out in a way completely independent and not internally,” he concludes.