Veterinary Summer Scholar student, Lauren Wolfrath spends her summers investigating prion diseases

Lauren Wolfrath, rising third-year dual degree DVM/PhD student participated in prion research for the Veterinary Summer Scholars program for the second year in a row.

Summer 2024, she worked with the National Animal Disease Center, and Summer 2025 she worked with the Minnesota Center for Prion Research and Outreach (MNPRO).

Wolfrath attended and presented her prion disease research at the AAVMC 2025 Veterinary Scholars Symposiums and the NAVS Combined Degree Colloquium (for DVM/PhD students) in Spokane, WA, from August 6-10. Her project was titled "Utilizing PPE for the Detection of Environmental Chronic Wasting Disease Prions." Wolfrath explains, "Chronic Wasting Disease diagnostics currently rely mainly on testing deer, primarily lymph nodes and brain samples. This project harnessed the environmental persistence of infectious CWD prions, which can be leveraged for various new CWD surveillance and management strategies. We used PPE (rubber boots) exposed to CWD-positive environmental prions, worn while hiking in CWD-positive and -negative geographic areas for CWD detection and monitoring of prion contamination. Boot swabbing was done at three time points: pre-hiking, post-hiking, and post-decontamination. We detected differences between the negative and positive sites by RT-QuIC, which is a seed amplification assay used to detect misfolded proteins. This suggests that RT-QuIC testing of boot swabs is a promising and accessible tool for environmental CWD surveillance in natural habitats as well as within cervid farming operations."

To learn more about the CVM Veterinary Summer Scholar program visit the CVM Veterinary Summer Scholars website.