The Alberta Prion Research Institute is a $35 million initiative, announced by the Alberta government in February 2005, to support top researchers working on solutions to the serious scientific and socioeconomic challenges associated with prions, the proteins thought to cause diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

The Alberta Prion Research Institute is coordinating fundamental, applied and multidisciplinary research geared toward providing solutions and models of policy action that can meet the BSE challenge for the beef and food industries, and similar challenges from other transmissible spongiform encephalopathy and other diseases in animals and humans related to protein misfolding.