Christina J. Sigurdson

Key facts

• She is listed as Professor of Pathology at UC San Diego and UC Davis, co-director of the Center for Veterinary Sciences and Comparative Medicine, and a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists; training listed as BS at UC Riverside, DVM at UC Davis, PhD at Colorado State University with Edward Hoover and a postdoc at the University of Zurich with Adriano Aguzzi.
• The Center for Veterinary Sciences and Comparative Medicine is a joint initiative of UC San Diego health sciences and the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, described as a base for about 25 academic veterinarians.
• She was first author, from the Zurich Institute of Neuropathology, of the 2007 Nature Methods paper (PMID 18026110) in which conformation-sensitive luminescent conjugated polymers separated four mouse prion strains that looked alike by immunohistochemistry and distinguished BSE from a related bovine prion disease; co-authors included Nilsson, Hammarstrom, Wuthrich and Aguzzi, and the funder listed is an NIAID K08 award.
• A Europe PMC search returns 79 prion records with her as author, from 1999 to 2026; the early run (1999 to 2008) is mostly CWD pathology in deer, including oral transmission and lymphoid targets in mule deer, and she is a co-author of the 2006 Science paper showing infectious prions in saliva and blood of CWD-infected deer.
• As last author of a 2015 J Clin Invest study (PMID 25705888), her group showed that mice expressing human PrP with four elk residues in the beta2-alpha2 loop became highly susceptible to deer and elk CWD prions, which points to that loop as one barrier between CWD and people; co-authors included Castilla at CIC bioGUNE.
• She was senior author of the 2018 mBio study (PMID 30459197) with Rocky Mountain Laboratories and UCSF: RT-QuIC detected prion seeding in eyes from all 11 sporadic CJD cases tested, highest in the retina, sometimes approaching brain levels, with seeds detectable in every cornea.
• She was senior author of UC San Diego studies co-authored by the Linkoping group: a 2018 Brain Pathology paper (PMID 29505163) in which a fibrillar CWD-derived mouse strain given intravenously replicated in the spleen and emerged in the brain as a new neuroinvasive strain, and a 2020 J Clin Invest paper (PMID 31985492) showing PrP glycans reduce plaque formation and spongiform change in mice.
• The 2020 J Clin Invest paper lists funding from several NINDS grants (including R01 NS076896 and R01 NS069566), the Ramon Areces Foundation and a CJD Foundation grant to her, with co-authors from the Hamburg Institute of Neuropathology.
• She received the NINDS Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award in 2022, which can fund her research for up to 7 years; NINDS describes the project as continuing mechanistic work on how PrPSc in infected neurons disrupts synaptic signalling, building on her finding that heparan sulfate is a co-factor for prion fibril formation.
• Recent work continues on PrP and synapses: she was last author of a 2025 J Clin Invest study (PMID 40185484) in which a mutant PrP with an extra glycan site caused seizures and NMDA receptor-driven neuron death in mice, with Rocky Mountain Laboratories co-authors.
• In April 2026 she was second author, with Watts (Tanz Centre, Toronto), Yobs (CJD Foundation) and Soto, of a Trends in Molecular Medicine opinion arguing that CJD should be classed as an Alzheimer disease related dementia.

Timeline

1. 1999First CWD paper listed, on oral transmission and early lymphoid spread in mule deer (J Gen Virol).
2. 2006Co-author of the Science paper on infectious prions in saliva and blood of CWD-infected deer.
3. 2007First author of the Nature Methods prion strain discrimination paper, from Zurich.
4. 2015Senior author of the J Clin Invest paper on human PrP loop residues and CWD transmission.
5. 2018Senior author of the Brain Pathology paper on novel neuroinvasive prions after intravenous challenge.
6. 2018Senior author of the mBio paper on prion seeds in the eyes of sporadic CJD patients.
7. 2020Senior author of the J Clin Invest paper on PrP glycans and plaque formation.
8. 2022NINDS Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award.
9. 2025Senior author of the J Clin Invest paper on mutant PrP and NMDA receptor excitotoxicity.
10. 2026Co-author of the opinion that CJD is an Alzheimer disease related dementia, with the CJD Foundation.