The Dora Middendorf Memorial Grant
Contributed by: Renee Middendorf and Family
Established in 2020.
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This project is focused on testing the efficacy of new anti-prion drugs that were designed based on the structure of a potential compound previously characterized by our group (Ferreira et al, 2014; Ferreira et al, 2017). All of these new compounds are able to strongly inhibit PrPRes formation in ScN2a cells infected with the rodent RML prion strain. Using RT-QuIC, we have also been able to test human samples as sources of prions. So far, we have found that most of the newly designed compounds inhibit amyloid fibril formation in RT-QuIC reactions seeded with brain homogenates from patients with sCJD, GSS and FFI. Our goal is to test these new drugs in laboratory grown human brain tissue (cerebral organoids) infected with sCJD and, finally, to test the safety and efficacy of the most promising compounds in prion-infected mouse models.
Dr. Ferreira received her PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil. Currently, she works as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, NIH. She has devoted her career to investigating new therapies to treat prion diseases and more recently, she is also interested in developing diagnostic tools to detect neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer and prion diseases at the early stages of the disease, where therapeutic intervention is more likely to be successful.
Contributed by: Renee Middendorf and Family
Established in 2020.
Contributed by: The Families of the CJD Foundation
Funds raised by the annual Strides for CJD run/walk have been applied to research grants awarded since 2016.
Contributed by: The Jeffrey and Mary Smith Family Foundation; Zoë Smith Jaye and Jenny Smith Unruh; and Mary Smith
Established in 2015.
Contributed by: The Families of the CJD Foundation
Funds donated by supporters of the CJD Foundation have been applied to research grants awarded since 2009.
This website was made possible by a generous donation from Cookie Stivison, in memory of her husband Tom Stivison, and a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
