With a $3 million grant from the Glenn Foundation for
medical research, UC-Berkeley and UCSF scientist are joining forces to build an
integrated research center targeting a variety of neurodegenerative diseases,
such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The primary targets for research are
prions, which are recently discovered infectious proteins that seem to be the
culprit of many neurological disorders.
As people
age, proteins and other cellular functions deteriorate overtime. Sometimes
these misfolded proteins can aggregate and become toxic to cells. Prions in
particular are of special concern, because they are infectious by serving as
template to convert other proteins to fold in the same, “rogue” manner. Prions
were discovered in 1997 by Dr. Stanley Prusiner, now a co-director for the Paul
F. Glenn Center for Aging Research, as the cause of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease,
or more colloquially as “Mad Cow”. Some prions are acquired, such as “Mad Cow”
in which the protein is in undercooked beef, some are inherited, and some cases
are sporadic. While prions are
infectious, none are contagious through normal person-to-person contact
(however Kuru, another prionic disease is spread through cannibalism).
According
to contemporary research Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s appear to be caused by
prions and new therapies will take an interdisciplinary approach. Researchers at
UCB and UCSF will look at every stage of a proteins life cycle from the quality
control mechanisms in cells, protein chaperones that aid in folding, and
protein degradation to find a specific approach for anti-prion therapy.
Dr. Prusiner
states that Alzheimer’s alone kills as many people each year as cancer does
yet, receives only ten percent of the amount of funding. The Glenn Center research
center represents great strides in a new and promising field.
-Will St. Amant
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