59th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Neurology

Session information

Neuroscience Frontier Symposium

[NSF-01] How neurons keep calm and carry on: roles of quality control in neurodegenerative diseases

Wed. May 23, 2018 9:50 AM - 11:50 AM Room 9 (Royton Sapporo / Regent Hall (2F))

Chair: Takafumi Hasegawa(Division of Neurology, Department of Neuroscience & Sensory Organs, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan), Mitsunori Fukuda(Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University, Japan)

Selective neuronal loss accompanied by specific protein aggregation is the histopathological hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases. Although the abnormal proteins responsible for each disease are different in structure and function, all neurodegenerative disorders share the common process of protein misfolding and aggregation. These aggregates directly and indirectly attack cellular components, leading to neuronal cell death. In order to fight against these continuous threats, cells have evolved ingenious quality control mechanisms that act either to facilitate refolding of misfolded proteins by molecular chaperones or to remove them by proteolytic degradation machinery, including the ubiquitin-proteasome system and autophagy-lysosome pathway. This symposium will facilitate the understanding of the roles of quality control machineries in neurodegenerative diseases and offer helpful hints on how to develop therapeutic strategies to combat these devastating diseases.