Luxembourg Professor Named among Winners of Brain Prize 2018

Luxembourg professor Michel Goedert has been chosen as one of this year’s winners of the most prestigious award for brain research, the Brain Prize.

The Lundbeck Foundation in Denmark announced that four neuroscientists working in the UK, Belgium and Germany today received the prestigious Brain Prize 2018. The award was given to Michel Goedert (Cambridge), Bart De Strooper (London and Leuven), Christian Haass (Munich) and John Hardy (London) for their fundamental work on the genetic and molecular basis of Alzheimer's disease.

Michel Goedert, who is a member of the University of Luxembourg’s managing council, is Programme Manager at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, England, and Honorary Professor at the prestigious University of Cambridge. His work on human brain tissue and transgenic mice, cell cultures and purified proteins has been the basis of the discovery- which initially attracted scepticism- of the importance of Tau protein in the development of Alzheimer's disease.

When Tau behaves abnormally, it assembles into filaments and becomes insoluble. A pathological process leading Tau protein from a soluble form to an insoluble filamentous form appears to be the cause of neurological degeneration. Different Tau filaments are related to different neurodegenerative diseases other than Alzheimer's, such as Pick's disease or progressive supranuclear palsy. His most recent work has shown that clumps of Tau filaments can spread along nerve paths.

The Brain Prize is worth €1,000,000 and is awarded annually to one or more international researchers in recognition of their outstanding contribution to neuroscience.