15 March 2021
For the first time, researchers have pinpointed what causes normal proteins to convert to a diseased form, causing conditions like CJD and Kuru.
The research team, from Imperial College London and the University of Zurich, also tested a way to block the process, which could lead to new drugs for combatting these diseases.
Discovering the mechanism by which prions become pathogenic is a crucial step in one day tackling these diseases, as it allows us to search for new drugs. Professor Alfonso De Simone
The research concerned prion diseases – a group of brain diseases caused by proteins called prions that malfunction and ‘misfold’, turning into a form that can accumulate and kill brain cells. These diseases can take decades to manifest, but are then aggressive and fatal.