Prof. John Mayer The School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Nottingham Medical School, UK

John Mayer received his BSc and PhD from the University of Birmingham. During his PhD he discovered the invertebrate glucagon which is a neuroendocrine peptide called the adipokinetic hormone. Prof. Mayer came to the University of Nottingham to help set up the Biochemistry Department at the new Medical School in... read more1969. He has a life-long interest in intracellular protein degradation by autophagic and ubiquitin-dependent mechanisms. Prof. Mayer discovered a new perinuclear cellular organelle for the isolation of potentially toxic proteins which he called ''a protein sequestration site associated with the microtubule organising centre for protein degradation by autophagy''. This organelle was subsequently rediscovered as the ''aggresome''. The Lewy body is probably an aggresome. Prof. Mayer was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists for the discovery of dementia with Lewy bodies and the molecular neuropathological (with Prof. James Lowe) and clinical (with Dr. Graham Lennox and Dr. Jane Byrne) definition of the disorder.