Prion Research of Stan Prusiner and his Colleagues

The title indicates a very special selection of articles on prion research. Indeed, when the discoverer of prions Stanley B. Prusiner turned 70 a symposium was organized by the editors, and many of his coworkers and cooperators from the mid 70th to today contributed with lectures published in the present book. The research described either carried out from the start-up until today in cooperation with Stanley Prusiner, or incentivated in San Francisco but developed independently, and everything in between. In section Historicals articles focus mostly on historical or better said anecdotal contributions, including the time when the prion-model was still highly controversial. This section might be interesting even for younger readers who never experienced that time. The section Structural Biology, Cell Biology and Neuropathology concentrates on the corresponding present-day themes of prion research. The section Neurodegeneration and Therapy Approaches widens the view to the much broader challenge of other neurodegenerative illnesses like Alzheimer s disease and others. What started as an unprecedented model for rare animal and human diseases, like CJD, applies today to the molecular principles of diseases which represent a health problem for a major part of the human society.