Prion diseases, such as the
sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD), are a class of fatal
neurodegenerative disorders. Currently, there is no efficient treatment or
therapy available. Hence, the search for molecules that may inhibit the conversion of the cellular
prion protein (PrPC) into its pathological counterpart PrPScrapie (PrPSc) is of great urgency. Here, we report the generation- and dose-dependent biological action of dense-shell
poly(propylene imine) (PPI) glycodendrimers by using
scrapie-infected
neuroblastoma (ScN2a) cells and the real-time quaking-induced conversion assay (RT-QuIC) for validation of anti-
prion efficiencies. Whereas the 2nd and 3rd generation of PPI glycodendrimers exhibited anti-
prion conversion efficiency in ScN2a cells validated by RT-QuIC analysis, we observed that the 4th generation of glycodendrimers had shown no significant effect. Translational RT-QuIC studies conducted with human
prions derived from sCJD patients indicated an anti-
prion conversion effect (not on PrPRes degradation) of PPI glycodendrimers against human
prions with the highest inhibitory activity of the 4th generation of PPI glycodendrimers towards
prion aggregation compared to the 2nd and 3rd generation. In conclusion, our study highlights the potential of PPI glycodendrimers as therapeutic compounds due to their anti-conversion activity on human
prions in a PrPSc strain depending manner.