Prions

Prion diseases recently have attracted interest not only scientifically but also socially because of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) epidemic and the outbreak of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in the United Kingdom. In 2004, the International Symposium of Prion Diseases for Food and Drug Safety was held October 31-November 2 in Sendai, Japan, where, 20 years earlier, arguments were first heard on whether the etiologic agent of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy was prions or scrapie-associated fibrils. This volume is a collection of current work on prion research that was presented at the 2004 symposium. Topics included range from basic research to clinical aspects of prion diseases, making the book a valuable resource for researchers and clinicians, and encouraging further developments by the next generation of researchers. TOC:Pathology of Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.- Clinical aspects of Variant CJD.- Dura mater related Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in Japan: Relationship between sites of grafts and clinical features.- Treatment options in patients with Prion Disease - the role of long term Cerebroventricular infusion of Pentosan Polysulphate.- Human prion diseases: novel diagnostic principles.- History and state of the art of PrP-res "typing" in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.- Chronic wasting disease in Cervids in North America.- Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Japan.- The role of host PrP in control of incubation time.- The role of the immune system in TSE agent neuroinvasion.- Prion protein interactions and TSE infections in cell culture models.- Semi-classical quantization of protein dynamics: Novel NMR relaxation formalism and its application to Prion.