Prion Alliance is a 501(c)(3) non-profit devoted exclusively to advancing scientific research towards a treatment or cure for human prion disease — a fatal neurodegenerative disease caused by misfolded proteins and known by various names including as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, fatal familial insomnia, and Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker disease. At present, there is no treatment or cure.

We — Sonia Vallabh and Eric Minikel — founded Prion Alliance after we learned in 2011 that Sonia inherited a genetic mutation that causes prion disease. We changed our careers to become scientists and devote our lives to a cure. We earned our PhDs at Harvard Medical School and established a prion laboratory at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where we work on developing therapeutics for human prion disease.

Our story has been told in WIRED, The New York Times, Scientific American, NPR Morning Edition & All Things Considered, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker.

Donate via PayPal to support our quest — donations matched 1:1 through June 30, 2024 in honor of Sonia’s newly released TED talk