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.
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