Knowledge matters. Why would anyone return to school despite already having a successful law practice, and having passed the Patent Bar as well as two states’ Bar exams? Weren’t the years spent getting a Juris Doctor and Bachelor’s degree in biology quite enough? For Brenda Entzminger, absolutely not. Scientists, engineers and other innovators devote themselves to their craft for decades, often putting a lifetime of work into their field of study. To be the best legal advocate for these inventors, there can be no guesswork or reliance on “alternative facts” – expertise matters. Commitment. Many of us may have participated in disease-research fundraisers. We want to support important research that is seeking to improve patient’s lives, minimize debilitating symptoms, and ultimately, find an effective cure or treatment for these diseases. We may have chosen to help because we have or have had a loved one afflicted by such diseases, or because we know that as we age, we are likely to be personally affected.
As we all know, funding is essential to this critical research, but so too is the commitment of the dedicated women and men who devote their lives to these areas of research. Brenda Entzminger’s work seeks to ensure that their beneficial discoveries and innovative therapies reach the afflicted public.
Important work is being undertaken by researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry to find the underlying causes of and potential treatments for protein aggregation diseases. (Click here for a fascinating discovery into the mechanism of GroEL ring separation and exchange) The majority of neurodegenerative protein aggregation diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s, appear with older age, as our cells’ proteostasis networks decline. [1] Specialized proteins, called chaperones, prevent protein aggregation by binding to unfolded or misfolded proteins and guiding them to degradation pathways or to specialized protein folding chambers called chaperonins. [2,3] Research into how chaperones perform protein folding and quality control may lead to biotechnological applications for preventing and treating protein aggregation diseases. [1]
And when Brenda isn’t working or studying? You’ll find her learning Italian, biking and running around San Francisco, or planning her next travel adventure with her husband.
