Michel Goedert Receives Honorary Degree from The University of Dundee

Dario Alessi (left) and Michel Goedert
Dario Alessi (left) and Michel Goedert

Laureation address by Dario Alessi, 22nd June 2018

Vice-Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of doctor of laws honoris causa, Dr Michel Goedert. Michel has undertaken pioneering studies that have made major contributions to unravelling our understanding of several brain disorders, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Michel was born and raised in one of Europe’s smallest countries, Luxembourg. As Luxemburg did not have a University, Michel was forced to travel to Switzerland to undertake his undergraduate studies, where he read medicine at the University of Basel. It is hard to imagine in this day and age, being required to leave the country that you were brought up in, in order to get an undergraduate education.

Much to the concern of his tutor, Michel devoted much of his time to undertaking basic research, rather than attending undergraduate lectures. Nevertheless, he succeeded in completing his medical training, in addition to publishing 10 research papers.

Michel next decided to pursue a PhD at the University of Cambridge. During this period Michel became friends with our vice-chancellor, Pete Downes, and he fondly recalls attending Elizabeth and Pete’s wedding reception in the village of Waterbeach near Cambridge.

The major decision point in Michel’s career came in 1984, when he had to decide what to do next after completing his PhD. The obvious course, that Michel’s parents wished him to embark on, was to pursue a career combining both medicine and basic research. However, Michel was concerned that he might end up being “bad at both”. Therefore, much to the chagrin of his parents, he decided to focus solely on basic research. Perhaps, it is best to stand out by doing one thing exceptionally well, rather than trying to do to many things averagely.

Michel then went on to do a postdoc in the world famous Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and was rapidly promoted to group leader. He has remained in this institute ever since.

Michel main research goal was to comprehend the molecular cause of Alzheimer’s the ‘disease of forgetfulness’. The symptoms of this uncurbable condition, afflicting tens of millions of people worldwide, are all too familiar, and include progressive memory loss, difficulties with language, thinking and problem-solving.

The hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease is the presence of striking deposits within the brain of patients. Microscope analysis, reveals that these deposits look like tangled up pieces of string. Therefore, these deposits are now usually referred to simply as “tangles”.

Michel had a hunch that finding out what these tangles were made up of, would provide a major clue to elucidating the cause of Alzheimer’s disease. In wonderful research, undertaken in the late 1980s, Michel succeeded in purifying these tangles from brains of patients who succumbed from Alzheimer’s disease. He discovered that tangles were made up of a protein called Tau.

Next working with, Maria Grazia Spillantini, who is now married to Michel, they made the important discovery that mutations in a gene that encodes the Tau protein, was sufficient to cause a form of inherited Alzheimer’s disease. This was a major advance, as it proved that a lesion in the Tau protein itself, was sufficient to cause disease. I am delighted that Maria is in the audience today with their son Thomas.

Michel next discovered that a process intensely studied at the University of Dundee, called “phosphorylation”, which involves attachment of phosphate molecules to Tau protein, plays a predominant role in causing Tau to form toxic tangles in Alzheimer’s patients. This resulted in an important long-term collaboration between Michel and researchers at the University of Dundee, especially with my colleague Sir Philip Cohen. Michel’s first visited Dundee in April 1992, to undertake experiments to determine whether there was an enzyme in brain that could remove toxic phosphate molecules from Tau. I recall this visit well, as I was tasked by Philip Cohen to aide Michel with these exciting studies. Since then, Michel has been a great friend and supporter of the University of Dundee over the years that we are very grateful for.

In recent work, Michel discovered that the Tau tangles are not static within cells. They have the remarkable property of being able to expand and spread from one brain cell to the other, likely accounting for the unstoppable progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

In further breath-taking work reported last year, Michel deployed a new technology called “cryo-electron microscopy” to obtain the first atomic-resolution images of the Tau tangles isolated from a patient’s brain. These are stunningly beautiful and provide us with “new eyes” so to speak, to understand how Tau proteins combine with one another to form tangles that ultimately cause Alzheimer’s disease.

It is now clear that deposits in brain cells similar to Tau cause many neurodegenerative conditions, including Parkinson’s disease. Indeed, seminal work undertaken by Michel and Maria in 1997, led to the discovery that deposits found in brains of Parkinson’s patients termed “Lewy Bodies” are made up of a protein called synuclein. Excitingly, at the same time, it was also discovered that mutations in the gene encoding for synuclein also caused inherited Parkinson’s disease.

Michel discoveries have changed the direction of research into Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Perhaps most importantly, they have led to new concepts of how to develop drugs that might prevent and better treat neurodegenerative conditions. Indeed, pharmaceutical companies are exploiting knowledge gained from Michel’s research to develop potential drugs that might suppress Tau and synuclein and forming toxic deposits. These are being evaluated. We should have the first glimpses of whether these treatments will be effective in the near future.

In closing, I would like to come back to the important contribution that Maria has made to Michel’s research. Although Maria and Michel run separate laboratories in different institutes in Cambridge, they have continued to work closely together. They are one of only a handful of couples in which husband and wife have been both elected to the Royal Society, the highest accolade of UK science. Perhaps, they are the only ones in this select subgroup who have actually worked closely together.

Other than running his laboratory, Michel has also devoted a lot of time in the last 15 years to help set up, at long last a new University in Luxembourg in which he serves on its governing board. It is still a work in progress, as Michel tells me that he considers this as a “partial University” as it does not yet have a medical school. Therefore, anyone in Luxembourg who wishes to study medicine still needs to go abroad, but many subjects including life sciences are now taught.

Finally, we are not the only admirers of Michel’s research. After Michel’s nomination for an honorary degree at the University of Dundee was approved, he was awarded this year Brain Prize, which is one of the world’s most prestigious scientific awards. Michel was also unable to accept our invitation to dinner this evening, as he has to travel to Luxembourg tonight to be presented the equivalent of a Knighthood by the Grand Duke of Luxembourg as part of Luxembourg’s national day June 23 festivities.

Vice-chancellor, I have the honour to invite you to confer upon Michel Goedert the Degree of Doctor of Laws.