2021 French moratorium on prion research

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In July 2021, France’s major public research institutes paused prion research for three months after a second lab worker was diagnosed with a form of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD). The move came amid ongoing concerns sparked by a previous case involving Émilie Jaumain, a scientist who was exposed to prions in 2010 and died years later.

Jaumain worked in a lab handling brain tissue from mice engineered to express human prion protein. In 2010 she pricked her thumb with forceps during cleaning, even while wearing gloves. She developed neurological symptoms in 2017 and was diagnosed with Variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD) in 2019, dying soon after. A 2020 medical paper concluded that percutaneous exposure to prion-contaminated material could cause vCJD and called for better prevention in labs and surgeries.

Jaumain’s family filed a negligence lawsuit against INRAE, alleging insufficient training, lack of proper cut-resistant gloves, and delays in decontamination after the injury. A 2020 government safety inspection found labs generally followed rules but also highlighted safety gaps and noted several lab accidents in the previous decade, including incidents with contaminated blades; one earlier accident occurred in the same lab in 2005. After Jaumain’s case, some labs switched to plastic scalpels and other stricter rules, but the inspectorate’s seven recommendations were not always followed.

In 2020, the EMILYS association was founded to push for stronger lab safety standards. In June 2021 INRAE acknowledged the possibility that Jaumain’s accident could be linked to her infection, and in March 2022 the institute officially recognized the causal link, following media attention and a second death.

The July 2021 moratorium was triggered by a second French lab worker diagnosed with CJD. It was supported by five public research bodies: Inserm, INRAE, the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), and the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES). The ban was lifted in September 2022 for INRAE prion laboratories, where two researchers had been infected at work, but it remained in place in other institutes. Safety concerns persist, and a later report highlighted concerns after the death of a Spanish prion researcher, revealed by El País, amid ongoing questions about safety in research institutions.