About Reports

IOM reports provide objective and straightforward advice to decision makers and the public. This site includes IOM reports published after 1998. All reports from the IOM and the National Academies, including those published before 1998, are available from the National Academies Press.

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  Advancing Prion Science: Guidance for the National Prion Research Program Released: November 17, 2003

  In Advancing Prion Science, the IOM Committee on Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies: Assessment of Relevant Science recommends priorities for research and investment to the Department of Defense's National Prion Research Program (NPRP). Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), also called prion diseases, are invariably fatal neurodegenerative infectious diseases that include bovine spongiform encephalopathy (commonly called mad cow disease), chronic wasting disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and scrapie. Unlike all other known infectious diseases, TSE infectivity appears to be associated with an abnormally folded protein called a prion. To develop antemortem diagnostics or therapies for TSEs, the committee concludes, NPRP should invest in basic research specifically to elucidate the structural features of prions, the molecular mechanisms of prion replication, the mechanisms of TSE pathogenesis, and the physiological function of prions’ normal cellular isoform.