Institut Pasteur, Paris

Institut Pasteur is a Paris biomedical research foundation and one of the five partners named on the French funding record for ERA BSE, a three-year European project on eradicating BSE. No page opened says which Pasteur unit takes part. The prion work that is documented at Pasteur comes from a cell biology unit, Membrane Trafficking and Pathogenesis, which studied how prions convert and move between cells, mainly in culture. It does not run human surveillance or clinical programmes as far as the opened pages show.

Key facts

  • The French agency record for ERA BSE (ANR-25-EUPA-0006) lists Institut Pasteur as a partner alongside the University of Edinburgh, the Friedrich-Loeffler Institut and APHA; the project runs 36 months with 299,805 euro of agency funding.
  • The same record names the VIM molecular virology unit beside Institut Pasteur without stating its affiliation, and gives no Pasteur unit or person.
  • The Pasteur Membrane Trafficking and Pathogenesis unit is headed by Chiara Zurzolo, who joined Pasteur in 2003 and studied the role of protein trafficking in prion disease.
  • A 2009 Nature Cell Biology paper from the unit reported that prion aggregates passed between cultured neuronal cells, and from dendritic cells to primary neurons, through tunnelling nanotubes; cells that merely touched did not transfer them.
  • Over 40 percent of the neuronal cells studied formed nanotube-like links, and blocking nanotube formation with latrunculin stopped transfer of endogenous infectious prion protein.
  • The authors proposed nanotubes as one route for prions moving from peripheral entry sites to the central nervous system, while stating that the in vivo role remains unproven.
  • A separate 2009 PLoS Pathogens paper from the unit placed prion conversion in or near the endosomal recycling compartment.
  • The unit later extended the nanotube concept to alpha-synuclein and tau; a 2023 trade press feature reports a May 2023 paper on microglia and alpha-synuclein spread.
  • The Pasteur member page shows the unit under former teams and lists an active project on prion-like protein spreading with 4 members.

Timeline

  1. 2003Chiara Zurzolo moves to Institut Pasteur and starts work on trafficking in prion disease.
  2. 2009Nature Cell Biology paper on prion spread through tunnelling nanotubes is published.
  3. 2009Gousset and Zurzolo review in Prion on nanotubes as a route for prion spreading is received (accepted 1 May 2009).
  4. 2011Zurzolo presents the conversion site and nanotube findings at a Cambridge seminar.
  5. 2023French Healthcare feature describes the unit's neurodegeneration work, including a May 2023 microglia study.
  6. 2025Institut Pasteur appears as a partner on the ERA BSE record under the EUPAHW2024 call.

People

Last checked 1 November 2026

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