Professor Maria Grazia Spillantini is the 2020 Thudichum Medal recipient, which is awarded to honour eminent scientists who have made outstanding contributions to neurochemistry and related subjects.

Maria Grazia is Professor of Molecular Neurology in the Clinical School of the University of Cambridge and her work focusses on the molecular neuropathology of diseases characterised by tau and alpha-synuclein aggregates. With her collaborators, she identified alpha-synuclein as the major component of the filaments that form the Lewy bodies in Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies, and described one of the first mutations in the Tau gene leading to frontotemporal dementia and Parkinsonism linked to chromosome 17. In this webinar, Maria Grazia presented her research into the causal involvement of alpha-synuclein in disease development. 

This webinar was chaired by Professor Stefan Roberts, Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Bristol and the Biochemical Society's Honorary Meetings Secretary.