Prusiner (1982) discovered it as a human disease causal agents. Stanley B. Prusiner discovered infectious agents which were prions. Kuru disease in humans is caused by infectious protein particles called Prion.
Kuru (a degenerative disease of central nervous system found in few tribes of New Guinea) and Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD, another such disease, cosmopolitan among middle-aged people) are caused by prions.Genetic material (DNA and RNA) is absent in prions. These can multiply themselves and are infectious also.