Date: Tuesday, November 12 - Thursday, November 14, 2024

At this conference experts in prion diseases and prion-like neurodegenerative disorders will gather to explore current disease mechanistic, translational, and clinical concepts, and identify potential collaborative synergies.

Human prion disorders, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), are invariably fatal neurodegenerative diseases involving the misfolding, aggregation, and propagation of the cellular prion protein (PrPC). Despite its comparative rarity, understanding mechanisms of neurodegeneration in CJD and other prion diseases will have a large impact on human health, given that overlapping disease mechanisms underlie the pathogenesis of more common neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases. Indeed, several major advances in our ability to diagnose and classify neurodegenerative diseases stem from concepts that originated in the prion disease research community, including the SYNTap biomarker test for Parkinson’s disease.

While our understanding of prion diseases has increased significantly, many important questions remain unanswered, including: 1) what is the structure of human prions; 2) what are the mechanisms of prion neurotoxicity; 3) what factors control prion formation, propagation, and clearance in the brain; and 4) to what extent do these principles apply to other neurodegenerative disorders such as AD/ADRD? The conference will probe those questions and facilitate dialogue between experts in prion disease pathogenesis and prion-like mechanisms in AD/ADRD that will be of mutual benefit to both fields.

Amanda Woerman, PhD, Prion Research Center, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO

Brian Appleby, MD, Director, National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH

Byron Caughey, PhD, Rocky Mountain Labs, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, MT

Christina Sigurdson, DVM, PhD, University of Califonia, Davis and University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA

Claudio Soto, PhD, Director, The George and Cynthia W Mitchell Center for Alzheimer's Disease and Other Brain Related Illnesses, University of Texas, Houston, TX

Debbie Yobs, President and Executive Director, CJD Foundation

Gabor Kovacs, MD, PhD, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Glenn Telling, PhD, Director, Prion Research Center, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO

Joel Watts, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Richard Knight, BA, BM BCh, FRCP(E), Chair, CJD Support Network, U.K. and Emeritus Professor of Clinical Neurology, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland

Simon Mead, PhD, Clinical Professor, MRC Prion Unit at UC London, Institute of Prion Diseases, London, England

Sonia Vallabh, PhD, Senior Group Leader, Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA

80% reimbursement if cancellation is received by October 1

50% reimbursement if cancellation is received by October 15

No reimbursement is available for cancellations received after October 15

For additional information, contact the CJD Foundation at 800-659-1991 or PrionADRDConf24@cjdfoundation.org.