Prusiner

Stanley B. Prusiner is an American neurologist and biochemist known for discovering prions and for formulating the prion hypothesis, which proposes that certain neurodegenerative diseases are caused by misfolded proteins that can propagate in the absence of nucleic acids.

Born in 1942 in Des Moines, Iowa, Prusiner studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his medical degree and began a career focused on protein biology and neurodegenerative disorders.

In the 1980s at the University of California, San Francisco, he and colleagues provided evidence that the scrapie agent is a protein and proposed that prion diseases are caused by infectious proteins. They identified the normal cellular prion protein, PrP, and the disease-associated form, PrPSc, which can convert normal PrP into the misfolded state.

His prion hypothesis posits that infectious agents can propagate without nucleic acids by altering protein conformation, a concept that reframed the understanding of certain degenerative diseases.

In 1997 Prusiner received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of prions and the formulation of the protein-only mechanism of infection.

At the University of California, San Francisco, he has served as director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases and has continued research on prions and related protein misfolding disorders. Prion diseases, including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, are characterized by progressive neurodegeneration and long incubation periods.