Proteopathy: The next therapeutic frontier?

The abnormal conformation and assembly of proteins is a probable cause of many degenerative diseases of old age. These proteopathies include such clinically disparate neurological disorders as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, as well as a variety of non-neurological maladies. The involvement of protein pathology in these diseases is well established and we are beginning to understand the process whereby proteins self-assemble and injure tissues; however, we remain largely in the dark regarding the fundamental origins of the proteopathies. Our present knowledge suggests three broad therapeutic approaches to abrogating the proteopathic cascade: reduce the production of the offending proteins, prevent their self-assembly, or promote their removal.