No one today has filed a complaint for the death of the scientist Franc Llorens, who died in July 2022, at the age of 45, allegedly after contracting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Last week, El País reported that in the laboratory of the Biomedical Research Institute of Bellvitge (Idibell), where the scientist worked, hundreds of biological samples of unknown origin with prions were discovered after his death , a type of protein that can cause neurodegenerative diseases.
The news caused great consternation in the scientific community and many questions were raised about how, when and from where the samples had arrived at the laboratory, which was not approved to conduct experiments with prions. The matter was discussed at the direction of the Mossos d'Esquadra, who agreed to refer the case to the Prosecutor's Office so that it was the public ministry that would decide whether or not the Catalan police would open an investigation into a particularly complex case .
In order to move forward with the work, the command of the Catalan police has already determined that it is the Commissaria General d'Investigación Criminal that is in charge of trying to clarify what happened and specify whether there were crimes or not. And within this police station, those in charge would be the police officers of the central consumption unit. why them Because they are researchers who have a regular relationship with the scientific sector; therefore, they know better a subject of great complexity.
The samples are now kept at the Animal Health Research Center (CReSA), on the campus of the Autonomous University (UAB), in Bellaterra, which has a high-security laboratory to work with dangerous viruses and prions.
At the moment, there is already an ongoing investigation to clarify how and when those samples arrived at Idibell and where they came from. A work initiated by the University of Barcelona, holder of the space where the laboratory is located, and in which the Idibell and the Networked Biomedical Research Center (Ciber) of the Ministry of Science participate in a coordinated manner, which he is the one who had hired the dead scientist.
Llorens' disease, which arrived at Idibell in 2018 from the University of Göttingen (Germany), and the discovery of the potentially infectious unregistered samples, have caused concern among the nine people who worked in the laboratory, as they fear having been exposed to high-risk situations without adequate protection.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a rapidly evolving degenerative neurological pathology. It is fatal in 100% of cases and there is no treatment to slow its progression. It is characterized by rapid deterioration of brain tissue caused by a prion, a defective protein that spreads like an infection. Most cases are sporadic. Only a minority are due to a contagion. In fact, Idibell's biosecurity committee had not authorized three projects to research with prions before Llorens' arrival, Gabriel Capellà, director of the institute, reported last week. This committee is responsible for assessing the biological risks of the facilities and the activities carried out at the centre.
Llorens stopped working in November 2020, when he started having neurological symptoms that could correspond to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Idibell has no record of his diagnosis.
In December 2020, biological samples of unknown origin were found preserved at 80 degrees below zero in the Llorens laboratory. The samples were not registered in the laboratory's databases, which was an anomaly. It was the neuropathologist Isidre Ferrer, head of Llorens in Idibell, who discovered them and immediately informed the management of the institute.
The laboratory was closed a few hours later and decontaminated in January 2021. The samples were sent at that time to CReSA in Bellaterra. Many were from the cerebrospinal fluid of people with Creutzfeldt-Jakob and other neurodegenerative diseases, and others came from animals.
With the information available so far, it is not clear whether experiments with prions were carried out at Idibell or not.
