Neurodegeneration and Prion Disease

David R. Brown Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK In 1982 Stanley Prusiner and colleagues puri?ed an abnormal protein from the brains of mice experimentally infected with a rare sheep dis- 1 ease called scrapie . This protein was called the prion protein. Earlier work had suggested that this diseases and others, loosely collected - gether as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), were not transmitted by conventional infectious agents. Prusiner suggested that 2 this new protein was the infectious agent in these diseases . Such a contentious suggestion lead to ferocious debate. Many researchers still maintained that there was no such thing as an infectious protein. - spite this, by 1990 most people accepted that the cause of the TSEs was the abnormal isoform of the prion protein his research group had id- ti?ed. The most convincing evidence for this had come from the work of Charles Weissmann, whose prion protein knockout mice could not be infected because they lacked expression of the protein that was now 3,4 forever linked to these disease . Since then it has become more widely accepted for these diseases to be termed prion diseases. In 1997 when 5 Stanley Prusiner won the Nobel Prize for his work on prion diseases . Even then, there was still an element of resistance in the scienti?c c- munity. It was considered that, in order the transmissible agent to truly be a protein only, the protein would have to be generated from a rec- binant source.

David R. Brown Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK In 1982 Stanley Prusiner and colleagues puri?ed an abnormal protein from the brains of mice experimentally infected with a rare sheep dis- 1 ease called scrapie . This protein was called the prion protein. Earlier work had suggested that this diseases and others, loosely collected - gether as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), were not transmitted by conventional infectious agents. Prusiner suggested that 2 this new protein was the infectious agent in these diseases . Such a contentious suggestion lead to ferocious debate. Many researchers still maintained that there was no such thing as an infectious protein. - spite this, by 1990 most people accepted that the cause of the TSEs was the abnormal isoform of the prion protein his research group had id- ti?ed. The most convincing evidence for this had come from the work of Charles Weissmann, whose prion protein knockout mice could not be infected because they lacked expression of the protein that was now 3,4 forever linked to these disease . Since then it has become more widely accepted for these diseases to be termed prion diseases. In 1997 when 5 Stanley Prusiner won the Nobel Prize for his work on prion diseases . Even then, there was still an element of resistance in the scienti?c c- munity. It was considered that, in order the transmissible agent to truly be a protein only, the protein would have to be generated from a rec- binant source.

Neuropathology of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (prion diseases).- Central pathogenesis of prion diseases.- Hereditory prion protein Amyloidoses.- Mouse behavioural studies and what they can teach us about prion diseases.- Electrophysiological approaches to the study of prion diseases.- Prion protein, prion protein-like protein, and neurodegeneration.- Oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction in neurodegeneration of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs).- Mechanisms of prion toxicity and their relationship to prion infectivity.- A stone guest on the brain: Death as a prion.- Molecular mechanisms mediating neuronal cell death in experimental models of prion diseases, in vitro.- Processing and mis-processing of the prion protein: Insights into the pathogenesis of familial prion disorders.- Signaling pathways controling prion protein neurotoxicity: Role of endoplasmic reticulum stress-mediated apoptosis.- Cell culture models to unravel prion protein function and aberrancies in TSE.- Insights into the cellular trafficking of prion proteins.- The molecular basis of prion protein-mediated neuronal damage.