DARPA Funds Project to See How Meds Trigger Prion Diseases

Here's a study saying, "Several commercially available biopharmaceutical products were found to contain misfolded proteins."

A Role for Protein Misfolding in Immunogenicity of Biopharmaceuticals

For largely unknown reasons, biopharmaceuticals evoke potentially harmful antibody formation. Such antibodies can inhibit drug efficacy and, when directed against endogenous proteins, cause life-threatening complications. …Several commercially available biopharmaceutical products were found to contain misfolded proteins. In some cases, the level of misfolded protein was found to increase upon storage under conditions prescribed by the manufacturer. Our results indicate that misfolding of therapeutic proteins is an immunogenic signal and a risk factor for immunogenicity.

Immunogenicity being "side effects."

Hmm. Seems DARPA has been funding prion research for a while now. Glad public health is recognized as a defense issue.

Detection of misfolded prion protein in blood with conformationally sensitive peptides

This work was partially supported by DARPA DSO Contract N66001-02-C-8001 ....

The long-standing goal of a preclinical diagnostic test for transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) has recently become urgent because of the discovery that humans with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease can transmit disease via blood transfusions.