Prions – a new principle of disease

Professor Stanley B. Prusiner, M.D, presents; ‘Prions – a new principle of disease‘, as part 3 of this special three part Nobel Conversations: discovering the unexpected.

Abstract: Dr Prusiner will discuss his discovery of prions — infectious proteins that cause mad cow disease, scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in people and other neurodegenerative diseases in animals and humans. The discovery represented a complete paradigm shift in biology, since up to that point it was thought that DNA or RNA were essential for the replication of any organism from viruses to human cells. Dr Prusiner demonstrated that prions are formed when a normal, benign cellular protein acquires an altered shape. His proposals of multiple shapes or conformations for a single protein, as well as the concept of an infectious protein were considered heretical. Prior to his discoveries, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1997, proteins were thought to possess only one biologically active conformation. Remarkably, the more common neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases have been found over the past two decades to be, like the prion diseases, disorders of protein processing.

Biography: Dr Prusiner received his undergraduate and medical training at the University of Pennsylvania and his postgraduate clinical training at the University of California, San Francisco. From 1969–72, he served in the US Public Health Service at the National Institutes of Health. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and is a foreign member of the Royal Society. Editor of 12 books and author of over 350 research articles, Dr Prusiner’s contributions to scientific research have been internationally recognised. He is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1997). In 2001, Dr Prusiner founded InPro Biotechnology Inc., which is devoted to commercialising some of the discoveries that he and his colleagues have made at the University of California.

The Nobel conversation: discovering the unexpected:
The Nobel conversations bring winners of Nobel Prizes in the Sciences to Imperial College London to discuss their major discoveries.  The emphasis of these conversations is on discovering the unexpected in science. After a brief presentation of the science, each Nobel Laureate will be asked questions relating to: Why did you become a scientist and what influenced your particular research path?  How did you view the problem initially and how did it change as your groundbreaking work unfolded?  Afterwards, the laureate will take questions from the audience.

Winners of the Nobel Prize are scientists, writers and peacemakers who have been awarded in their field of endeavour, and who are known collectively as either Nobel laureates.

Visit www.nobelprize.org for more information on Nobel laureates and the Nobel Prize. 

A drinks reception will follow the conversation.

Register for a ticket, including postal address details at: events@imperial.ac.uk