Prions are notorious for their extraordinary resistance to traditional methods of decontamination, rendering their transmission a public health risk. Iatrogenic
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (iCJD) via contaminated
surgical instruments and medical devices has been verified both experimentally and clinically. Standard methods for
prion inactivation by
sodium hydroxide or
sodium hypochlorite have failed, in some cases, to fully remove
prion infectivity, while they are often impractical for routine applications.
Prion accumulation in peripheral tissues and indications of human-to-human bloodborne
prion transmission, highlight the need for novel, efficient, yet user-friendly methods of
prion inactivation. Here we show both in vitro and in vivo that homogenous photocatalytic oxidation, mediated by the photo-
Fenton reagent, has the potential to inactivate the pathological
prion isoform adsorbed on
metal substrates. Photocatalytic oxidation with 224 μg mL(-1) Fe (3+), 500 μg mL(-1) h(-1) H 2O 2, UV-A for 480 min lead to 100% survival in golden Syrian hamsters after intracranial implantation of
stainless steel wires infected with the 263K
prion strain. Interestingly, photocatalytic treatment of 263K infected
titanium wires, under the same experimental conditions, prolonged the survival interval significantly, but failed to eliminate infectivity, a result that we correlate with the increased adsorption of PrP(Sc) on
titanium, in comparison to
stainless steel. Our findings strongly indicate that our, user--and environmentally--friendly protocol can be safely applied to the decontamination of
prion infected
stainless steel surfaces.