Michel GoedertFRS,FMedSci is a Luxembourgish-Britishneuroscientist and former Head of Neurobiology, at theMRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.[1]
Goedert was born and raised in Luxembourg. After finishing his medical studies at theUniversity of Basel in 1986, he started working at theMedical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology affiliated with theUniversity of Cambridge.
Goedert was awarded theMetlife Foundation Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer's Disease in 1996, thePotamkin Prize in 1998 and theEuropean Grand Prix for Research by the Foundation for Research onAlzheimer's disease in 2014. In 2018 he was one of four recipients of theGrete Lundbeck European Brain Research Prize with the citation "For their groundbreaking research on the genetic and molecular basis of Alzheimer's disease, with far-reaching implications for the development of new therapeutic interventions as well as for the understanding of other neurodegenerative diseases of the brain".[2] In 2019 he received theRoyal Medal.[3] and the Rainwater Charitable Foundation prize for outstanding innovation in neurodegenerative disorder research.[4]
He is married toMaria Grazia Spillantini, a geneticist with whom he has one son, Thomas.
Goedert's work combines biochemical, molecular biological and structural techniques to investigate common neurodegenerative diseases, includingAlzheimer's andParkinson's.[5] His research focused on the abnormal filamentous inclusions that characterise Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, showing that the intracellular filaments of these diseases are made of eitheralpha-synuclein ortau protein.[6] Goedert's team identified mutations inMAPT, the tau gene, that cause rare inherited forms offrontotemporal dementia with tau inclusions, establishing a central role for tau assembly in the disease.[7]
