RESEARCH ARTICLE
Protein Misfolding Diseases
Vittorio Bellotti*, Monica Stoppini
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2009Volume: 2
First Page: 228
Last Page: 234
Publisher ID: TOBIOJ-2-228
DOI: 10.2174/1874196700902010228
Article History:
Received Date: 27/04/2009Revision Received Date: 19/06/2009
Acceptance Date: 22/06/2009
Electronic publication date: 31/12/2009
Collection year: 2009
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Diseases caused by protein misfolding are an emerging pathologic category that are thought to share some basic common mechanisms and display impressive heterogeneity in terms of tissue involvement, age of onset and clinical features. The growing recognition of the impact that protein misfolding has on human diseases is certainly related to the phenomenon of population aging and the expansion of the population in which these diseases are more frequent, but it is also based on a scientific revolution that looks at protein dynamics and relates these data to their potential pathologic implications. The multidisciplinary exchange of knowledge between experts in apparently unrelated diseases, such as sickle cell anemia and Alzheimer’s disease, has helped clarify the pathogenesis of these and many other diseases. The quick expansion of knowledge on the mechanisms of these diseases is priming pharmaceutical research that is now providing the first prototype drugs.