REQUENA Jesús R.

Jesús R. Requena is Associate Professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where he leads a research group focused on prions and prion diseases at the CIMUS Biomedical Research Institute. He obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Santiago de Compostela, and subsequently carried out postdoctoral research at the University of South Carolina, and the Laboratory of Protein Biochemistry at the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute at Bethesda, USA. Dr. Requena has been interested for many years in the structure of the PrPSc prion, the causal agent of the fatal neurodegenerative ailment Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. In collaboration with Holger Wille and Howard Young, from the University of Alberta, Canada, he has recently elucidated the general architecture of this enigmatic infectious and pathogenic protein, which consists of a 4-rung β-solenoid. This knowledge allows for the first time an understanding of the mechanism by which PrPSc prions propagate. More recently Dr. Requena has opened a research line on therapy of prion diseases, and he currently leads a multinational eRare-funded project aimed at finding chemical chaperones that, stabilizing the normally folded precursor of PrPSc, this is, PrPC, might prevent their conversion to the PrPSc form. Dr. Requena is the author of more than 60 peer-reviewed papers, coordinated the FP7, EC-funded project “Priority” and will host the 2018 international prion meeting in Santiago de Compostela.