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The NCE program's ability to respond to challenges as they arise has been pivotal to its success in helping Canada grow in health and prosperity. The program constantly evolves, as evidenced by the creation of PrioNet, a new network charged with addressing a specific threat to the cattle industry and human health.

PrioNet

Specific threats to Canada's health and prosperity require specific, targeted responses.

In May of 2003, a cow from an Alberta farm was identified as infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). It was a discovery that, so far, has cost billions of dollars, forced farms into receivership and caused once-solid industries to shrivel.

That is why the NCE, at the request of the federal government, launched a targeted competition to create a new network to investigate BSE and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) caused by prions – proteins that occur normally in a harmless form but, by folding into aberrant shapes, result in puzzling diseases that are neither bacterial, fungal nor viral and contain no genetic material.

With the creation of PrioNet in November of 2005, top researchers from across the country began pooling their laboratory resources, students and expertise to strengthen Canada's efforts to diagnose, treat and hopefully prevent BSE and other prion-related diseases such as chronic wasting disease (CWD) in elk and deer and Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD), which is fatal to humans.

PrioNet, which is receiving funding of $5 million a year, is headquartered in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia. It is co-ordinating collaboration between experts from several research areas, universities and government departments within Canada and across the globe. It works in close partnership with the Alberta Prion Research Institute.

Dr. Neil Cashman, PrioNet's Scientific Director and one of the world's leading prion researchers, said the first priority is to build "an intellectual infrastructure" and then begin translating the research knowledge into effective measures to deal with prion diseases. The network's success, he said, "will be defined as the application of basic research and social research to the socio-economic problems posed by prion diseases."

Although these are early days, PrioNet has already developed a research network and has projects underway at several Canadian universities. It is working in collaboration with more than 20 different organizations and industry partners.