Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases: The prion concept in relation to assembled Aβ, tau, and α-synuclein

Converging paradigms in neurodegeneration Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease are progressive neurodegenerative diseases with increasing prevalence in our aging populations. Recent evidence suggests that some of the molecular mechanisms involved in the pathology of these diseases have similarities to those observed in infectious prion diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease). Goedert reviews how the spread of a variety of pathological protein aggregates is involved in neurodegenerative disease. Science , this issue p. 10.1126/science.1255555