Gregory J. Raymond

Key facts

• He is first author of Antisense oligonucleotides extend survival of prion-infected mice (JCI Insight, 2019), with the affiliation Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIH, Hamilton, Montana.
• In that study prophylactic PrP lowering ASOs extended survival of RML prion-infected mice by 61 to 98 percent, a single dose at 120 days after infection extended it by 55 percent, and a non-targeting control ASO had no effect, pointing to PrP lowering as the mechanism.
• The contributions statement lists him among those who conceived and designed the ASO study, ran the experiments and wrote the paper, alongside Vallabh, Caughey, Minikel, Kordasiewicz, Zhao and Carroll; funding came from the CJD Foundation, Prion Alliance, BroadIgnite, NSF and NIH, with Ionis paying only for its own work.
• A 2026 tribute by Eric Minikel says the collaboration began in 2015 when Ionis offered ASOs, that Raymond and Brent Race worked out the stereotactic dosing method through pilot rounds while exchanging notes with Ionis scientists, and that Raymond delayed his retirement to see the studies through.
• He is first author of the 2020 Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology bioassay in which CJD nasal brushings carried at least 10,000-fold less infectivity than brain, CSF transmitted no disease to mice, and RT-QuIC reaction products showed no detectable infectivity; he conceived the project and ran the mouse bioassays.
• He coauthored the 2019 targeted mass spectrometry method for measuring PrP in CSF (Minikel et al., Mol Cell Proteomics), which supports CSF PrP as a readout for PrP lowering drugs, and the 2019 Nature Communications study detecting prion seeding activity in skin of infected animals by RT-QuIC.
• Earlier first-author work used cell-free conversion assays to show low efficiency of BSE and scrapie conversion of human PrP (Nature, 1997) and a molecular barrier limiting chronic wasting disease conversion of human, cattle and sheep PrP (EMBO J, 2000), followed by CWD transmission studies in hamsters and transgenic mice (J Virol, 2007).
• He was first author on the 2012 J Virol isolation of novel synthetic prion strains and a coauthor on the 2021 to 2022 cryo-EM structures of infectious mouse prion strains from the Caughey and Kraus groups.
• Publication affiliations from 2012 to 2022 consistently give the Laboratory of Persistent Viral Diseases, RML, NIAID.
• PubMed lists 57 records under Raymond GJ, the newest prion paper dated 7 November 2022, and Europe PMC returns no prion records for him from 2023 to 2026, so there are no publications in the last 24 months.
• The only public institutional route found is Rocky Mountain Laboratories, the NIAID intramural campus in Hamilton, Montana; the 2020 paper names Caughey and Zanusso as corresponding authors, not Raymond.

Timeline

1. 1997First author on the Nature paper assessing potential transmissibility of BSE and scrapie to humans by cell-free conversion.
2. 2000First author on the EMBO J paper describing a molecular barrier to chronic wasting disease in humans, cattle and sheep.
3. 2007First author on CWD transmission and adaptation in hamsters and transgenic mice (J Virol).
4. 2012First author on isolation of novel synthetic prion strains in transgenic mice (J Virol).
5. 2015Ionis offers PrP-targeting ASOs to the Caughey laboratory; Raymond and Race begin pilot dosing work.
6. 2019First author on the JCI Insight ASO survival study.
7. 2019Coauthor on the CSF PrP mass spectrometry method paper.
8. 2020First author on the CJD transmission bioassay of nasal brushings, CSF and RT-QuIC products.
9. 2022Last indexed paper, a PLoS Pathogens cryo-EM comparison of mouse prion strains.
10. 2026Colleague tribute to Byron Caughey credits Raymond with the ASO dosing work and notes his delayed retirement.