Page 2 - Eric Minikel News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

My dad died last spring. Two months after a doctor diagnosed him with a fatal prion disease. This spring, I'm trying to move forward.

In the mornings, Sonia Vallabh and Eric Minikel's first job is to get their two garrulous kids awake, fed and out the door to daycare and kindergarten. They then reconvene at the office and turn their focus to their all-consuming mission: to cure, treat, or prevent genetic prion disease. Prions are self-replicating proteins that can cause fatal brain disease. For a decade, Sonia Vallabh has been living with the knowledge that she has a genetic mutation that will likely cause in her the same disease that claimed her mother's life in 2010. Upon discovering she had the mutation, Sonia and her hu...

“This is basically not a survivable mutation,” said the biologist who led the research. “If you have it, you’re pretty much dead.”