Byron W. Caughey

Key facts

• Career at NIAID Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana: joined in 1986, tenured Senior Investigator in 1994, Chief of the TSE/Prion Biochemistry Section in 2006.
• RT-QuIC: his lab developed the real-time quaking-induced conversion assay, which grew from recombinant PrP seeded conversion (2007) through QuIC (2008) to RT-QuIC (2010 and 2011), reached routine clinical practice in 2014, and spread worldwide on a protocol from his lab published in 2015.
• Structure: in 2021 his lab published the first cryo-EM structure of an infectious prion, and in 2024 a cryo-EM structure of chronic wasting disease fibrils from deer.
• Antisense work: in 2015 he agreed to launch mouse studies of Ionis antisense oligonucleotides against PrP; the 2019 JCI Insight paper reporting longer survival of treated prion-infected mice listed him among the authors, and the CJD Foundation helped fund some of the work.
• Training and collaboration: by 2019 staff scientist Christina Orru-Groveman had trained people at about 30 laboratories, and visiting scientists spent weeks to months in his lab.
• Recognition and output: five US patents, a dozen international meetings organized, and in 2019 the Aspen Institute Italia Award shared with Italian colleagues for work on the improved test.
• Latest public outputs: the chapter Tracking Prions by RT-QuIC: An Update (first online 1 October 2025), and a Prion 2025 speaker biography naming nasal brushings and spinal fluid as RT-QuIC sample types.
• Invention record: NIH lists him as lead inventor of a technology using recombinant bank vole prion protein as a broadly reactive RT-QuIC substrate, with licensing and collaboration open (listing published 26 August 2026).
• Policy work: he co-chaired a CIDRAP work group on chronic wasting disease contingency planning and contributed to its 2025 report on spillover preparedness.
• Seed assays beyond prions: the lab applied the method to Alzheimer and Parkinson disease and studied eye tissue as a specimen after finding prion seeds in the eyes of eleven deceased CJD patients in 2015.

Timeline

1. 1986Joins NIAID Rocky Mountain Laboratories.
2. 1994Becomes tenured Senior Investigator.
3. 2006Becomes Chief of the TSE/Prion Biochemistry Section.
4. 2007Recombinant PrP seeded conversion paper published in Nature Methods.
5. 2010RT-QuIC end-point quantitation paper published in PLoS Pathogens.
6. 2014RT-QuIC implemented in routine clinical practice.
7. 2015Standard RT-QuIC protocol for human CJD spinal fluid published in mBio.
8. 2018RT-QuIC added to the CDC diagnostic criteria for prion disease.
9. 2019Aspen Institute Italia Award; antisense mouse survival paper published in JCI Insight (July).
10. 2021First cryo-EM structure of an infectious prion published in Molecular Cell.
11. 2025RT-QuIC update chapter first online.
12. 2026Dies.
13. 2026NIH publishes the bank vole substrate technology listing.