Toward Therapy of Human Prion Diseases

Three decades after the discovery of prions as the cause of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, we are still nowhere close to finding an effective therapy. Numerous pharmacological interventions have attempted to target various stages of disease progression, yet none has significantly ameliorated the course of disease. We still lack a mechanistic understanding of how the prions damage the brain, and this situation results in a dearth of validated pharmacological targets. In this review, we discuss the attempts to interfere with the replication of prions and to enhance their clearance. We also trace some of the possibilities to identify novel targets that may arise with increasing insights into prion biology.