About the Virtual Conference

The CJD Foundation Family Conference is held annually in July in Washington, DC. Due to COVID-19, this year's event will be Virtual.

We are pleased to be able to bring conference sessions to you virtually this year, at no cost. 

We will greatly miss this opportunity to gather with the CJD community in person, but look forward to sharing with you updates from the nine research grants we awarded this year, thanks to your generous support.  We at the CJD Foundation send our best wishes, and our hopes that you remain safe and healthy.

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What You'll Learn:

Each year at the CJD Foundation conference, we provide overviews about the basics of prion disease as preparation for the scientific presentations.  Here are recordings of the 2020 presentations.

2020 CDC Update on Prion Disease with Ryan Maddox, PhD, Epidemiologist, CDC

Ryan Maddox, PhD, Epidemiologist, CDC shared 2020 CDC updates and reports on:

  • Number of cases
  • Data sources for tracking CJD cases in U.S.
  • Blood, organ, and tissue donation
  • Variant CJD
  • Chronic Wasting Disease
  • Funeral guidelines for CJD

Keynote: Genetic Prion Disease and How Genetics Might Help Us Understand Sporadic CJD with Simon Mead, Consultant Neurologist & Clinical Lead, UK National Prion Clinic, National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery

Professor Simon Mead is a consultant neurologist and Clinical Lead of the UK National Prion Clinic based at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, UCLH. Simon trained at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, Newcastle and London. His PhD (2002) focussed on prion diseases, since then he has retained this interest working at the Medical Research Council’s Prion Unit at UCL where he is Deputy Director.

Simon is interested in all aspects of CJD and other human prion diseases, particularly experimental medicine, the discovery of genetic and epigenetic factors that cause or modify prion disease, understanding prion-like mechanisms in other dementia disorders and the development of treatments for prion disease.

National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center Update with Brian Appleby, MD, Medical Director, CJD Foundation, and Director, National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center

Dr. Brian Appleby, Director of the NPDPSC, and his team, shared:

  • Updates on the work of the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center (Prion Center/NPDPSC)
  • Introduction to members of the Prion Center team
  • CJD surveillance in the environment of COVID-19
  • Testing and Autopsy Programs
  • Research studies at the Prion Center

CJD Foundation Research Grant Recipient Reports Panel 1

Speakers: 

  • Sonia Vallabh, PhD, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
    Assessing efficacy of zinc-finger repressors of prion protein as a therapeutic for prion disease
  • Dr. Holger Wille, University of Alberta
    Evaluating prion vaccines in transgenic mouse models of familial prion diseases

Moderator: 

  • Simon Mead, Consultant Neurologist & Clinical Lead, UK National Prion Clinic, National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery

Antisense Oligonucleotides for Prion Disease with Anne Smith, Executive Director, Clinical Development at Ionis Pharmaceuticals

Anne Smith, PhD, is an Executive Director of Clinical Development at Ionis Pharmaceuticals, a California-based biotechnology company focused on RNA-targeting therapeutics. She is responsible for shepherding promising therapies from the research stage through clinical trials.  She specializes in neurology drug development and leads teams working in multiple disease areas. Anne is passionate about developing treatments for underserved patients and is thrilled to be leading Ionis’ prion development program. She will be presenting on antisense oligonucleotide targeting of PRNP mRNA as potential treatment for prion disease.

CJD Foundation Research Grant Recipient Reports Panel 2

Speakers: 

  • Fei Wang, PhD, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
    Generating Recombinant Human Prions in Large Scale for Structural Studies 
       
  • Rodrigo Morales, PhD, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
    Exploring the zoonotic potential of porcine-derived materials from animals exposed to infectious prions
     
  • Dr. Gabriel Haller and Brooke Sadler, PhD, Washington University School of Medicine
    The Contribution of Rare Variant and Copy-Number Variation to Risk of Sporadic CJD and Pleiotropy with Other Neurodegenerative Diseases
     
  • Candace Mathiason, PhD, Prion Research Center, Colorado State University
    Use of Blood-borne Prion Amplification Assays for the Detection of Human Prion Diseases and Biomarker Assessment

Moderator: 

  • Brian Appleby, MD, Medical Director, CJD Foundation, and Director, National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center

CJD Foundation Research Grant Recipient Reports Panel 3

Speakers: 

  • Anna Poleggi, PhD, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome
    Investigating the influence of CYP4X1 gene of age at onset of CJD as potential preventive therapeutic approach
     
  • Qingzhong Kong, PhD, Case Western Reserve University
    The RAP approach for effective prevention and treatment of prion diseases
     
  • Natalia do Carmo Ferreira de Araujo, PhD, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIH/NIAID
    Evaluation of new anti-prion drugs: from drug design to therapeutic efficacy against human prions in vitro, ex-vivo and in vivo  

Moderator: 

  • Richard Knight, BA, BM BCh, FRCP(E), Chair, Management Committee, the UK CJD Support Network

Thank You To Our Partners:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention