There is no treatment or prevention for prion diseases. Current efforts in prion therapy development generally focus on a single aspect of the complex prion diseases. We will attempt to develop effective and affordable prevention and treatments for prion diseases using both cutting-edge gene therapy approaches and conventional drugs to simultaneously suppress prion replication, protect brain cells against toxicity and damage, and reduce the cellular prion protein that is essential for both prion replication and pathogenesis.
Dr. Kong earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Biochemistry from Nanjing University in 1987 and 1990, respectively, and he completed his Ph.D. degree in Molecular Virology at the University of Massachusetts in 1996. He received his postdoctoral training in Molecular Immunology at Yale University from 1996-2000, after which he joined the Department of Pathology at Case Western Reserve University as an assistant professor. Dr. Kong is currently a tenured Associate Professor of Pathology and Neurology and Associate Director of the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at the School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA.
Dr. Kong’s research interests center on prion protein (PrP) and prion diseases as well as gene therapies, including public health risks of animal prions, animal modeling of human prion diseases, skin prions, and novel human prion diseases, early diagnosis of prion diseases, etiology of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), processing of the normal cellular PrP, and gene therapies for cancer, diabetes, and prion and other neurodegenerative diseases. He is on the editorial boards of a few journals, including Frontiers in Neuroscience and Annals of Translational Medicine. He has served on several review panels for grant agencies and private foundations, such as NIH, USDA, Alberta Prion Research Institute (Canada), and Alzheimer’s Association.
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.
Contributed by: Sandra (Cookie) Stivison
Established in 2015.
Contributed by: Jeanne Cole
Established in 2015.
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: Jill Canuel
Established in 2017.
Contributed by:
Ernie’s Gift 4 CJD Foundation
Established in 2017.
Contributed by: Karla Piriz and Lauren Piriz
This grant was established in 2015.
Contributed by: Her Siblings with Love
This grant was established in 2019.
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.
