In memoriam: Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr. med. h.c. Lore Zech; 24.9.1923 – 13.3.2013: Honorary member of the European Society of Human Genetics, Honorary member of the German Society of Human Genetics, Doctor laureate, the University of Kiel, Germany

Brigitte Schlegelberger

doi:10.1186/1755-8166-6-20

Abstract

In memoriam: Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr. med. h.c. Lore Zech; 24.9.1923 – 13.3.2013: Honorary member of the European Society of Human Genetics, Honorary member of the German Society of Human Genetics, Doctor laureate, the University of Kiel, Germany

Highlights

Lore Zech (Figure 1) was in a certain way the mother of modern cytogenetics
Identification of tumor-specific chromosome aberrations paved the way for the molecular characterization of leukemias and lymphomas and for development of targeted therapy [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]
After her “retirement” she joined the Department of Medical Genetics at the University Hospital of Uppsala, where she spent every day involved in chromosome and FISH analyses as well as discussions with many young colleagues

Summary

Introduction

Lore Zech (Figure 1) was in a certain way the mother of modern cytogenetics. Without her major contribution, i.e. the development of the first chromosome banding technique to differentiate human chromosomes, modern cytogenetics would not have become the important tool for clinical and tumor cytogenetics it is today. In 1971, during the IVth International Congress of Human Genetics in Paris, she was invited to present her findings, and from there on chromosome bands were widely accepted and an international nomenclature established. During the decades Lore Zech used the Q-banding technique to identify numerous recurrent chromosome aberrations in human leukemias and lymphomas. Correspondence: Schlegelberger.Brigitte@MH-Hannover.de Institute of Cell and Molecular Pathology, Hannover Medical School, Carl-Neuberg-Str. 1, Hannover D-30625, Germany

Results

Conclusion