Patent 7303907 was granted and assigned to Health Protection Agency on December, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) agent is inactivated by exposing the TSE agent to a thermostable proteolytic enzyme at elevated temperature and at acid or alkaline pH. Following this step, or separately, presence of TSE infectivity is detected by detection of dimers of prion protein.