Jawahar Swaminathan and MSD staff at the European Bioinformatics Institute [Public domain] via Wikimedia CommonsPrion disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, frontotemporal dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis all share a common etiology: neurodegeneration linked to the misfolding and aggregation of a specific protein. But the causes of neuronal death in these diseases are still poorly understood, impeding the development of strategies to prevent neurodegeneration. To fill this knowledge gap, Corinne Lasmézas (The Scripps Research Institute, Jupiter, FL) and her collaborators study neurodegeneration in prion disease using a highly toxic misfolded monomeric form of prion protein (TPrP).
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