It is terrifying certainly but I am not sure about understudied. We have studied them and found it just pretty lacking in countermeasures for deformed proteins - including avoidance because they are hard to detect. The whole field is hard.

Theoretically better protein understanding may allow for lack of better words "antigens" which bind to prions to make something harmless while not acting like prions in themselves but that would be one very big computational space and would call for a vast array to compare.