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Ignazio Cali, PhD

Grant Title: Investigating prion protein seeding activity in non-prion disease dementia

Location: Department of Medicine and Surgery, University Kore of Enna, Italy; Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology, at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU); Associate Director at National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center (NPDPSC), Cleveland, OH

Grant Year: 2025

Currently, it is believed that more than one pathogenic protein accumulates in the brain of subjects with a neurodegenerative disease as well as in the normal aging brain, suggesting a possible cross-talk between different pathogenic proteins. At the 2024 CJD Foundation Family Conference, we described that abnormal PrP accumulated in the brain of a subset of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia. These results were obtained following the real-time quaking induced conversion (RT-QuIC), a highly sensitive assay for the detection of even minute amounts of prions.

The new proposal aims at investigating whether a similar phenomenon is also observed in patients with other neurodegenerative diseases, such as corticobasal degeneration, progressive supranuclear palsy, Parkinson’s disease, multiple system atrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

About the Researcher:

Dr. Ignazio Cali received his doctoral degree (Ph.D.) from the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli.” In 2015 he carried out his thesis work at Case Western Reserve University. Currently, Dr. Cali is an Associate Professor at University Kore of Enna and Associate Director of the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center (NPDPSC). His main research interests focus on understanding the molecular basis of phenotypic expression in comorbid neurodegenerative diseases, such as prion diseases and Alzheimer’s disease or prion diseases and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. This research aims at investigating the reciprocal impact that the two or more pathological proteins have on each other, and the pathological consequences of the interactions between different pathogenic proteins. Dr. Cali has published nearly 50 articles on human prion diseases, and animal models of the disease.