When most people hear the words malignant and brain, cancer immediately comes to mind. But our authors argue that proteins can be malignant too, and can spread harmfully through the brain in neurodegenerative diseases that include Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, CTE, and ALS. Studying how proteins such as PrP, amyloid beta, tau, and others aggregate and spread, and kill brain cells, represents a crucial new frontier in neuroscience.