From mad cows to mini brains

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• Cath Haig, NIH - NIAID - RML
• Wednesday 01 December 2021, 16:00-17:00
• https://zoom.us/j/96577382505.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Alyssa Miller.

Prion diseases encompass a family of fatal neurodegenerative conditions that have gained notoriety due to their transmissible nature. Public awareness of these diseases is often limited to the variant of Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease that emerged following bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) contaminated meat entering the food supply. However, these diseases more commonly arise sporadically or are hereditary. Despite decades of research there are currently no effective treatments and few in development. Likewise, an understanding of the pathogenesis within the human brain still eludes us and translating the findings from animal models into knowledge of human disease has been hindered by a lack of human model systems. The ability to investigate prion diseases in living human brain tissue presented itself following the development of human cerebral organoids. Cerebral organoids are spheres of brain tissue that can be grown on demand in the laboratory from stem cells. This presentation will outline how the use of human cerebral organoids has advanced our examination of neurodegeneration during prion diseases and what they might add to the search for a therapy.

This talk is part of the Biophysical Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Biophysical Seminar Series 2016/17
• Biophysical Seminars
• Department of Chemistry
• Featured lists
• School of Physical Sciences
• https://zoom.us/j/96577382505

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