Journal of Clinical and Cellular Immunology
Open Access
ISSN: 2155-9899
ISSN: 2155-9899
Pierluigi Gambetti
Department of Pathology and National Prion Disease,
Pathology Surveillance Center,
Case Western Reserve University,
USA
Pierluigi Gambetti is an Professor currently working at Department of Pathology and National Prion Disease, Pathology Surveillance Center, Case Western Reserve University, USA. His/her research interests reflect in prion diseases, He/She has wide range of publication and attended National or International Oral Presentations
The primary focus of my research is prion diseases. The main objective is the understanding of the fine changes leading to the disease. The approach is multidisciplinary. My group analyzes the human prion disease and try to establish accurate anatomo-clinical correlations. Special attention is devoted to the understanding of correlations between pathological changes, such as spongiosis, and the distribution, amount and type of the abnormal prion protein present in the brain of affected individuals. For these studies we take advantage of the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center of the USA which is located at CWRU within our laboratories and provide an invaluable source of cases of prion disease. We analyze in vitro the chemicophysical characteristics of the prion protein and the mechanisms of conversion of the normal to the abnormal prion protein conformer. Finally, we used transfected cells and transgenic animals to investigate in detail the various abnormalities of the prion protein metabolism related to the presence of mutations in the prion protein gene leading to disease.