Stanley B. Prusiner, M.D.

Stanley B. Prusiner, M.D.
Director, Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases
Professor of Neurology and Biochemistry,
University of California, San Francisco

Synthetic Prions, Mad Cows and Scientific Heresy
Monday, April 17, 2006, 12:00 noon
Mayo Auditorium

Dr. Prusiner discovered an entirely new class of agents called prions that, unlike all other infectious agents, lack a nucleic acid genome. Rather, prions are infectious proteins that propagate by converting a normal cellular protein into an amyloid form that gradually causes neurodegenerative diseases ranging from scrapie and mad cow disease in animals to kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Dr. Prusiner's revolutionary studies have been recognized by every major award in biomedical research, culminating in the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1997.