Maria Grazia Spillantini, PhD

Maria Grazia Spillantini is Professor of Molecular Neurology at the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge (UK). With her collaborators, she identified alpha-synuclein as the main component of the filaments that form the Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites in Parkinson’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies and the glial inclusions in multiple system atrophy and described one of the first mutations in the MAPT gene causing frontotemporal dementia. The current interest of her group is on alpha-synucleinopathies, tauopathies and TMEM106B aggregation. In particular, the group develops transgenic mouse models and 2D and 3D cellular systems from human induced pluripotent stem cells and mouse models reproducing protein aggregation and where to investigate the mechanisms of spreading and toxicity of alpha-synuclein and tau aggregates. The models developed are used to test compounds for disease treatments.