Imaging prions: The site of conversion and intercellular spreading

Chiara Zurzolo

Dr. Zurzolo carried out her studies at Naples University Medical School in Italy where she graduated in medicine and then obtained a PhD in molecular and cellular biology. From 1991 to 1994, she was a post-doc at Cornell University Medical School in New York and she returned to Naples as an Assistant Professor in 1995. In 2002, she initiated a new line of research at the Pasteur Institute in Paris on the role of intracellular trafficking of the prion protein during its transconformation into the infectious form.

The Zurzolo lab studies the mechanism of sorting of plasma membrane proteins to the apical membrane in epithelial cells and the role of lipid microdomains (rafts), proteins and lipid segregation in this process. One of the model proteins used is the prion protein PrPc, which is responsible for Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies. Dr. Zurzolo’s team is studying the exocytic and endocytic transport of PrPC, and its pathological mutants in order to understand the role of intracellular trafficking and rafts in its pathological conversion to the infectious form.