Idealab - Journal Club

Self-propagation of pathogenic protein

aggregates in neurodegenerative diseases

Mathias Jucker1,2 & Lary C. Walker3,4

For several decades scientists have speculated that the key to understanding age-related neurodegenerative disordersmay be

found in the unusual biology of the prion diseases. Recently,owing largely to the advent of newdiseasemodels, this hypothesis

has gained experimental momentum. In a remarkable variety of diseases, specific proteins have been found to misfold and

aggregate into seeds that structurally corrupt like proteins, causing themto aggregate and formpathogenic assemblies ranging

from small oligomers to large masses of amyloid. Proteinaceous seeds can therefore serve as self-propagating agents for the

instigation and progression of disease. Alzheimer’s disease and other cerebral proteopathies seem to arise from the de novo

misfolding and sustained corruption of endogenous proteins, whereas prion diseases can also be infectious in origin.However,

the outcome in all cases is the functional compromise of the nervous system, because the aggregated proteins gain a toxic

function and/or lose their normal function. As a unifying pathogenic principle, the prion paradigmsuggests broadly relevant

therapeutic directions for a large class of currently intractable diseases.

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Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 5.30pm PST, Ryan Bethencourt will be leading a discussion, co-hosted by Nina on Self-propagation of pathogenic protein aggregates in neurodegenerative diseases and I would love to have anyone that has experience or interest in the Neurodegenerative diseases to join us for broad ranging discussions! Please feel free to sign up below for the free Idealab discussion co-hosted by Nina and several Biohacker spaces/groups:

https://www.meetup.com/Berkeley-Biolabs/events/138879892/ (http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emeetup%2Ecom%2FBerkeley-Biolabs%2Fevents%2F138879892%2F&urlhash=nrav&_t=tracking_anet)

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Dedicating this discussion to Les Halpin:

I'd also like to dedicate this discussion to the patients who are suffering and need our help in finding cures to these terminal diseases and in particular a friend of mine, Les Halpin, who passed away at the weekend due to ALS. Les was a serial entrepreneur who funded a lot of research on ALS, was my fellow co-founder at Halpin Neurosciences (which led to the identification of J147 by Eric Valor for ALS) and he also developed the Halpin Protocol to accelerate the development of therapies for life threatening diseases in the UK.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10314789/Motor-neurone-disease-campaigner-Les-Halpin-dies.html (http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Etelegraph%2Eco%2Euk%2Fhealth%2Fhealthnews%2F10314789%2FMotor-neurone-disease-campaigner-Les-Halpin-dies%2Ehtml&urlhash=mbxb&_t=tracking_anet)

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Come and join us for a discussion on Neurodegenerative diseases, protein misfolding and therapeutic interventions tomorrow!

Please send me a message with your email address if you need the materials for the discussion. Thanks!

zoom invite: https://zoom.us/j/319892606