A life dedicated to Alzheimer’s disease research: in memory of Inge Grundke-Iqbal (1937–2012)

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) was first reported 106 years ago, but until the 1980s, little was known about the underlying disease mechanisms. Modern AD research had been driven mainly by two milestone discoveries made in the 1980s: (1) identification of amyloid b peptide as the major component of amyloid plaques and its precursor protein, and (2) identification of hyperphosphorylated microtubule-associated protein tau as the building block of paired helical filaments (PHFs)/neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs). On 22 September 2012, the AD field lost a pre-eminent figure— Inge Grundke-Iqbal—who discovered hyperphosphorylated tau in Alzheimer PHFs/NFTs. Inge Grundke-Iqbal was born in Osnabrueck, Germany, on 20 July 1937. After receiving a PhD degree in biology and biochemistry at Georg August University, Goettingen, Germany, in 1967, she started her research career as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max-Planck Institut fur Immunobiologie, Freiburg i. Br., Germany. In 1969, she moved to the USA and received further postdoctoral training at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (1969–1970); the New York University Medical Center, New York, NY (1970–1972); and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY (1972–1974). In 1974, she was promoted to Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, initiating her research focus on neuropathology and AD. In 1977, she moved to the New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities (IBR), located in beautiful Staten Island, a borough of New York City. The institute, then under the direction of the late Henryk M. Wisniewski (also a pioneer of AD research), was an incubator of AD research and attracted many researchers in the field. It was here that she directed the Neuroimmunology Laboratory and, from 1997 to 1998, chaired the Department of Neurochemistry. She spent most of her time in her laboratory during her last 35 years, right up until the week before her death. Inge Grundke-Iqbal embarked upon her career in AD research in 1974 in the Department of Pathology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine together with her husband, Khalid Iqbal, who also is a world-renowned AD researcher. The department was directed by Robert D. Terry and was the most active AD research group in the world at that time. The biggest question in the AD field at C.-X. Gong (&) Deparment of Neurochemistry, New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities, 1050 Forest Hill Road, Staten Island, New York 10314, USA e-mail: chengxin.gong@csi.cuny.edu