Contributed by: The Jeffrey and Mary Smith Family Foundation; Zoë Smith Jaye and Jenny Smith Unruh; and Mary Smith
Established in 2015
Grant Title: Investigating the role of BLOC-1 complex in prion disease
Location: Institute for the Science of the Aging Brain (ISAB), St. Gallen, Switzerland
Grant Year: 2026
Grant Title: The structural basis of prion-induced synaptotoxicity
Location: Imperial College London (ICL)
Grant Year: 2026
Grant Title: Haematopoietic stem cell gene therapy as a novel therapeutic for CNS prion disease
Location: The Roslin Institute & Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, University of Edinburgh
Grant Year: 2026
Grant Title: Engineering human cells to propagate fluorescent prions for live monitoring of prion infection and high-resolution in situ prion structure determination
Location: Imperial College London, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Infectious Disease,
Synthetic and Structural Biology Section
Grant Year: 2025
Grant Title: Assessing retinal function as a potential early biomarker for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD)
Location: Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences, The University of Melbourne
Grant Year: 2025
Grant Title:
Investigation of Glycoprotein Nonmetastatic Melanoma protein B (GPNMB) as potential therapeutic target in Prion Diseases
Location:
University of Zurich
Grant Year: 2024
Grant Title:
Human Mini-Brains as a New Platform to Identify and Validate Pharmaceutical Compounds for the Treatment of CJD
Location:
CEA/DSV/iMETI/SEPIA (Institute for Emerging Illnesses and Innovative Therapies, Department of Prion and Atypical Infections Research), Fontenay-Aux-Roses, France
Grant Year:
2015
Grant Title:
A new anti-prion compound that reduces PrPc levels and inhibits PrPsc replication. [Awaiting permission to release from Dr. Chiesa.]
Location:
Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri, Milano, Italy
Grant Year: 2016
Grant Title:
Assessing Prions in Sporadic CJD Patients
Location:
National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio
Grant Year:
2017
Grant Title:
RT-QuIC assay on olfactory brushings in asymptomatic carriers of E200K mutation: An explorative study for establishing when a preventive therapy should be started
Location:
University of Verona, Italy
Grant Year:
2017
Grant Title:
Worms: A novel genetic model for therapeutic research in prion disease
Location:
Alzheimer’s and Prion diseases Lab at the Brain & Spine Institute (ICM) of the Salpêtrière Hospital, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France
Grant Year:
2017
Grant Title:
“Systematic Evaluation of the Zoonotic Potential of Different CWD Isolates”
Location:
Mitchell Center for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Brain Disorders, Department of Neurology, University of Texas-Houston Medical School
Grant Year:
2018
Grant Title:
“Highly Synergistic Combination Therapy for Prion Diseases”
Location:
Department of Biochemistry, Boston University School of Medicine
Grant Year:
2018
Grant Title:
“Investigating the Potential of the Neuroprotective N1 Fragment of the Prion Protein as a New Treatment Against Prion Diseases”
Location:
Institute of Neuropathology, University Medical Center – Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
Grant Year:
2018
Grant Title:
Modeling Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Using Human iPSC-derived Neurons
Location:
Center for Regenerative Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine
Grant Year: 2019
Grant Title:
Determining the therapeutic potential of anti-PrP nanobody
Location: Professor, Center for Neurodegenerative Science, Van Andel Institute, Grand Rapids, MI
Grant Year: 2019
Grant Title: Assessing long-term stability of cerebrospinal fluid PrP levels in genetic prion disease mutation carriers
Location: Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School; and Translational Neurology Head of the Interdisciplinary Brain Center, Massachusetts General Hospital
Grant Year: 2019
Grant Title:
Investigating prion protein seeding activity in Alzheimer’s disease and chronic traumatic encephalopathy
Location:
Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, OH
Grant Year: 2023
Grant Title:
Prion protein aggregate size distribution drives clinical phenotype
Location:
Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Grant Year: 2022
Grant Title:
Evaluating passive immunotherapy in prion-infected transgenic mice expressing human PrP
Location:
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Grant Year: 2021
Grant Title:
Strain-specific pathology and spread in prion organotypic slice culture assay infected with different strains of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
Location:
Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases, University of Alberta, Canada
Grant Year: 2021
Grant Title:
Genome-wide association study (GWAS) of age at clinical onset in inherited prion disease (genetic CJD)
Location:
University College London (UCL) Institute of Prion Diseases
Grant Year: 2021
Grant Title:
Implementation of a blood-based biomarker test for sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob in clinical practice”
Location:
The Network Center for Biomedical Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIBERNED), Spain and German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases
Grant Year:
2021
Grant Title:
Early diagnosis of CJD from in vivo MRI using the trajectories of prion lesion propagation
Location:
Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Neurologico Carlo Besta, Milan, Italy
Grant Year: 2021
Grant Title:
Generating Recombinant Human Prions in Large Scale for Structural Studies
Location:
The Mitchell Center for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Brain Disorders; The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Grant Year: 2020
Grant Title:
Assessing efficacy of zinc-finger repressors of prion protein as a therapeutic for prion disease
Location:
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Grant Year: 2020
Grant Title:
The Contribution of Rare Variant and Copy-Number Variation to Risk of Sporadic CJD and Pleiotropy with Other Neurodegenerative Diseases
Location:
Washington University School of Medicine
Grant Year: 2020
Grant Title:
Exploring the zoonotic potential of porcine-derived materials from animals exposed to infectious prions
Location:
Department of Neurology, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Grant Year: 2020
Grant Title:
Evaluation of new anti-prion drugs: from drug design to therapeutic efficacy against human prions in vitro, ex-vivo and in vivo
Location:
Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIH/NIAID
Grant Year: 2020