160 Fei Wang – Protein Misfolding-Associated Neurodegenerative Diseases
Satveer Sangha
Dr. Fei Wang is an assistant professor at the Mitchell Centre for Alzheimer’s Disease and Brain Disorders (“Department of Neurology,” 2021). Dr. Wang’s research is mainly focused on protein misfolding-associated neurodegenerative diseases (“Department of Neurology,” 2021). His research interests and goals included further investigating neurotoxic mechanisms that result in protein misfolding-associated neurodegenerative diseases (“Department of Neurology,” 2021). Dr. Wang has researched prion diseases, neurodegenerative disorders that severely impact people and animals, which is caused by the misfolding of a prion protein (PrPC) into a pathogenic prion protein (PrPSc) (Wang et al. 2018). Dr. Wang investigated the infectivity of both undigested and proteinase K digested recombinant prions, leading to quite the same results of infectivity (Wang et al. 2018). Another publication by Dr. Wang explains prion diseases are infectious protein misfolding disorders that are the only protein misfolding disorders that occur naturally (Ma & Wang, 2014). Dr. Wang and Dr. Ma provided a ‘protein-only hypothesis’ which demonstrated that a protein can replicate itself without nucleic acid, therefore a prion could theoretically also grow in the same manner (Ma & Wang, 2014).
Fun Facts:
Dr. Fei Wang completed his Bachelors in Science in Microbiology at Nankai University, China; later he received a PhD in biochemistry from The Ohio State University (“Fei Wang, PhD”, n.d.). He is the recipient of multiple grants including: The CJD Foundation Grant, the Strides for CJD Grant, and The Katie Dopirak Memorial Grant (“Fei Wang, PhD”, n.d.). Further on, Dr. Wang received the position as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Texas Health Science Center and later joined the Mitchell Center for Alzheimer’s Disease and Brain Disorders as an assistant professor in 2021 (“Department of Neurology,” 2021).
References
(2021). Department of Neurology – Fei Wang, PhD. UTHealth Houston McGovern Medical School. https://med.uth.edu/neurology/faculty/fei-wang-phd/
Fei Wang, PhD. Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Foundation, Inc. https://cjdfoundation.org/fei-wang-phd
Ma, J., & Wang, F. (2014). Prion disease and the ‘protein-only hypothesis’. Essays in biochemistry, 56, 181–191. https://doi.org/10.1042/bse0560181
Wang, F., Wang, X., Abskharon, R., M, Jiyan. (2018). Prion infectivity is encoded exclusively within the structure of proteinase K-resistant fragments of synthetically generated recombinant PrPSc. Acta Neuropathol Communications. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40478-018-0534-0