Dr. Brahic obtained his MD and PhD degrees from French universities. Following post-doctoral work at McGill University, and an assistant professorship of medicine at UCSF, he was recruited to the Institut Pasteur. As a result of his research and administrative activities, he was awarded the French “Ordre National du Merite’. Following mandatory retirement, he joined Dr. Kirkegaard’s laboratory as a consulting professor due to their shared interests in the mechanisms of viral spread through tissues in vivo.

Dr. Brahic’s long-term interest is the pathogenesis of chronic CNS diseases caused by viruses such as Theiler’s virus, HTLF-1 and Borna virus. In studying the movement of viruses between cells, both Drs. Brahic and Kirkegaard noticed that the observed non-lytic spread of cytoplasmic constitutents was consistent with several mechanisms of ‘uncoventional secretion,” including autophagy-mediated secretion. The present proposal is to apply these ideas to the movement of aggregated alpha-synuclein through brain tissues.