Alyssa Block

Key facts

• She works at the Prion Research Center, Colorado State University; the CJD Foundation profile and the laboratory news item call her a postdoctoral researcher, while the Telling laboratory member list gives her position as Research Scientist I.
• Her 2025 CJD Foundation project is titled Refined transgenetic approaches to investigate selective adaptation of human prions during intracranial and peripheral transmissions, and the stated aim is to characterise susceptibility by medically relevant routes of infection and how prion strain properties influence those processes.
• The Telling laboratory announced the one-year CJD Foundation award on 11 July 2025, describing it as work on a refined gene-targeted mouse model for human prion adaptation.
• Her doctorate was taken at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, on transmission, adaptation and strain emergence of synthetic prions in hamsters.
• She is first author on Efficient interspecies transmission of synthetic prions (PLoS Pathogens, July 2021), on Prion protein amino acid sequence influences formation of authentic synthetic PrPSc (Scientific Reports, January 2023) and on the review Prion strains, shining new light on old concepts (Cell and Tissue Research, 2023).
• Her most recent indexed output in the last 24 months is as fourth author on Epigenetic changes associated with the progression of prion disease in Syrian hamsters, posted as a Research Square preprint in October 2025 and indexed with a Prion journal record carrying a 2026 date.
• Her stated current interests at Colorado State are the strain diversity of emergent Nordic chronic wasting disease and the development of improved human prion disease animal models.
• The earlier registry text assigned her the topic of prion protein seeding activity in non-prion dementia; that topic belongs to other entries in the same 2025 grant list and not to her project, so the registry text needs correcting.

Timeline

1. 2021First author on a PLoS Pathogens paper on efficient interspecies transmission of synthetic prions.
2. 2023First author on a Scientific Reports paper on prion protein amino acid sequence and the formation of authentic synthetic PrPSc.
3. 2023Co-author on a PLoS Pathogens paper on preexisting substrain diversity in a biologically cloned prion strain.
4. 2025CJD Foundation research grant cycle lists her project on refined transgenetic approaches to human prion adaptation.
5. 2025Telling laboratory news item announcing her one-year CJD Foundation research grant.
6. 2025Research Square preprint on epigenetic changes during prion disease progression in Syrian hamsters, with her as fourth author.