Dr.. Mark Head
- Reader
- m.w.head@ed.ac.uk
Organisation Associations
School of Regeneration and Repair
School of Population Health Sciences
Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences
Edinburgh Neuroscience
Current research interests
My current CJD research uses human tissue-based approaches and cellular and cell-free model systems to:
Determine whether definable molecular strains underlie the clinico-pathological heterogeneity of human prion diseases.
Define the cellular risk factors for susceptibility to human prion infection
Develop sensitive and discriminatory tests for human prions
Determine the risks to human health associated with emergent animal prion diseases
Investigate the effects of molecular chaperones on the process of pathological protein misfolding
Research in a nutshell
My research concerns the biochemistry, genetics and cell biology of the class of epigenetic pathogens known as prions, which cause fatal neurodegenerative conditions such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.