For Immediate Release
Contact: Beth Slater
The Aspen Institute
Tel. 970-544-7914
Aspen, CO, March 2, 2010 –– The Aspen Institute is pleased to welcome Nobel laureate Stanley Prusiner to speak at a special Fireside Après Ski gathering on Tuesday, March 9, 2010. Mr. Prusiner will speak on advances in the life sciences which impact the quality and length of our lives. The event will take place from 5:00-6:00 pm at the Aspen Meadows Restaurant Bernhard Room. Ken Adelman will moderate the discussion. The fee is $10 per person.
Dr. Prusiner won the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 1997 for his ground-breaking, yet controversial work on the prion, which he found responsible for neurodegenerative disorders such as mad cow disease and, less directly, Alzheimer’s. With NIH funding and using a quarter million mice, Prusiner concluded in 1981 that a protein he dubbed prion caused such brain diseases. His conclusions were widely dismissed, if not disparaged at the time. Yet by 1992, it became evident he was right. Five years later, when the Nobel Committee announced Prusiner alone was receiving the award that year, it explained that his research could lead to new therapies for such debilitating and deadly neurological disorders as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
Dr. Prusiner is now director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, and Professor of Neurology at the University of California-San Francisco. Born in 1942 in Des Moines, IA, Prusiner earned his B.A. cum laude and his MD from the University of Pennsylvania.
Registration and more at www.aspeninstitute.org/aspenevents or call 970-544-7914.
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