Medical devices utilizing animal tissues and their derivatives — Part 4: Principles for elimination and/or inactivation of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) agents and validation assays for those processes

ISO/TR 22442-4:2010 offers suggestions for designing and conducting validation assays to help determine if processes used in the manufacture of medical devices derived from non-viable animal tissues might serve to reduce the risk of iatrogenic transmission of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs).

The TSE-removal methods used to process animal tissues should also reduce the risk of transmitting TSE infections via non-viable tissues of human origin; this Technical Report does not address this issue. Some current information on human tissues and TSEs is presented which may be applied by analogy to other animal tissues.

ISO/TR 22442-4:2010 does not intend to imply a need for validation of methods involving specific materials identified as having a "negligible risk" of contamination with TSE agents as listed in Annex C of ISO 22442-1:2007.

It is intended to clarify final draft international standards included in the ISO 22442 series, as well as in ISO 14160.

ISO/TR 22442-4:2010 builds upon the specific discussion in ISO 22442-3 relative to TSE agents and attempts to summarize the current state of the art in the arena of TSE agent elimination. As the understanding of ina