Research interests: prion protein (PrP), prion diseases, gene therapies
Dr. Kong is an expert on zoonosis of animal prions as well as animal modeling and laboratory diagnosis of human prion diseases. His research interests center on prion protein (PrP) and prion diseases as well as gene therapies, including public health risks of animal prions, animal modeling of human prion diseases, skin prions and novel human prion diseases, etiology of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), processing and functions of the normal cellular PrP in the biology and diseases of skeletal muscles and brain, and gene therapies for cancer, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, is the prion disease in cattle. The classic BSE strain is transmissible to humans, causing the variant CJD, but the human transmission risks of the less common atypical L-type and H-type BSE strains were not clear. The Kong lab demonstrated that both L-type and H-type atypical BSE are transmissible to humans with unusual presentations. Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is the prion disease in free-ranging or farmed cervids, including deer, elk, moose, and reindeer. CWD is a widespread and expanding epidemic in North America, but the zoonotic risk of CWD prions remains uncertain and the characteristics of CWD infection in humans are still unknown.