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Welcome to this presentation,
which is entitled "Prion-like
Propagation of Parkinson's Disease."
My name is Patrik Brundin.
I am at the Center for
Neurodegenerative Science at Van
Andel Institute in
Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I also have an affiliation
with Lund University in Sweden.
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So this story begins
about six years ago.
We had submitted a manuscript
entitled "Lewy bodies
in long-surviving mesencephalic
grafts for Parkinson's disease
may suggest prion-like propagation."
The reviewers at
"Nature Medicine" found
this to be an
interesting observation.
And all three of them thought
it should be published.
However, one reviewer pointed
out that "On page five,
the discussion of potential
mechanisms for the phenomenon
is interesting and appropriate."
But "thereafter, the discussion
of prion-like propagation
of pathology into
grafted neurons ventures
into unsubstantiated fantasy--
the 'prion hypothesis'
should be limited to no more than
three sentences and reference to it
should be removed from
the title-- In fact,
I think there were about 11
sentences dealing with this.
And we ended up with
maybe three or four.
We did indeed remove
it from the title.
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Finally, the paper was published--
not using the word prion
or prion-like in the title and
barely discussing the hypothesis--
just mentioning it in passing.
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So the themes for today's talk are
really to "focus on the progression
of Parkinson's disease," and in
doing so, "injecting substance
into the unsubstantiated fantasy"
that I just mentioned-- namely,
that Parkinson's disease might
be a prion-like disorder.
Finally, I will spend
some time discussing
what we can do about this.
Is this opening up
avenues for new therapies?
I will begin by describing
progression of Parkinson's disease
and putting it in context of what
this disorder is really about.
