Maria Grazia Spillantini - Biography#

Born in Arezzo (Italy), Maria Grazia Spillantini received a Laurea in Biological Sciences from Florence University. After working at the INSERM Centre “Paul Broca” in Paris (France) and the Italian “Istituto Superiore di Sanita’” in Rome she moved to Cambridge in the UK where she obtained a PhD in Molecular Biology from Cambridge University working at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology with Prof Sir Aaron Klug. In 1996 she moved to the Brain Repair Centre, that later became part of the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at Cambridge University, where she was first Lecturer, then Reader, and since 2007 Professor of Molecular Neurology. Her interest is on neurodegenerative diseases characterized by protein aggregation such as tauopathies and alpha-synucleinopathies. With her collaborators she described alpha- and beta-synucleins in human brain and determined the chromosomal localization of their genes. She then identified alpha-synuclein as the component of the filaments that form the Lewy bodies in Parkinson’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies and the glial inclusions in multiple system atrophy opening the field of alpha-synucleinopathies. She was also involved in determining tau isoforms in human brain and their aggregation in Alzheimer’s disease and described one of the first mutations in the MAPT gene causing frontotemporal dementia, establishing a role of tau in neurodegenerative diseases now named Tauopathies. She has received several awards, including the Potamkin Prize of the American Academy of Neurology, the Jay Van Andel award for achievements in Parkinson’s disease, the Golgi Medal, the Thudicum Medal of the British Biochemical Society and the European Grand Prix of the French Fondation Recherce Alzheimer. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society (London), the Academy of Medical Sciences (London), Royal Society of Biology (UK), Clare Hall (Cambridge) and was awarded the honor of Officer of the Star of Italy by the President of Italy.