John Q. Trojanowski

John Quinn Trojanowski (December 17, 1946 – February 8, 2022) was an American academic research neuroscientist specializing in neurodegeneration.

He and his partner, Virginia Man-Yee Lee, MBA, Ph.D., are noted for identifying the roles of three proteins in neurodegenerative diseases: tau in Alzheimer's disease, alpha-synuclein in Parkinson's disease, and TDP-43 in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal degeneration.

John Quinn Trojanowski was born on December 17, 1946, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, as the second of the seven children of Maurice Trojanowski and Margaret (Quinn) Trojanowski.

Trojanowski obtained his M.D./Ph.D. in 1976 from Tufts University in Boston.

After a medicine internship at Mt. Auburn Hospital and Harvard Medical School, he began pathology/neuropathology training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School (1977–1979), and completed training at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1980 where he was appointed assistant professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine on January 1, 1981, and rose to the rank of tenured full professor in 1990.

including the NIA Neuroscience, Behavior and Sociology of Aging Study Section (1987–1991)

Trojanowski held major leadership positions at the University of Pennsylvania including: Director of a National Institute of Aging (NIA) Alzheimer's Disease Center (1991–2022), Principal Investigator of a NIA Program Project Grant on Alzheimer's (AD) and Parkinson's (PD) disease (1990–2005), Director of Medical Pathology (1988–2002), Interim Director (2001–2002) and Director (2002–2022) of the Institute on Aging, Co-Director (1992–2022) of the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, Director, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Morris K. Udall Parkinson's Disease Research Center of Excellence (2007–2022), the first William Maul Measey–Truman G. Schnabel, Jr., M.D., Professor of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology (2003–2022) and Co-director of the Marian S. Ware Alzheimer Drug Discovery Program (2004–2022).

For more than fifteen years, Trojanowski conducted research on AD, PD, motor neuron disease, dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and other aging related nervous system disorders.

Most of his >500 publications focus on the pathobiology of neurodegenerative disorders, especially the role of abnormal protein aggregates (misfolded proteins) in these diseases.

The major goal of his research was to translate advances into understanding mechanisms of aging related neurodegenerative diseases into meaningful interventions to treat or prevent these disorders.

Trojanowski died in Philadelphia from complications of chronic spinal cord injuries on February 8, 2022, at the age of 75.

Trojanowski received several awards for his research, including:

Disease Research (1991)

Alzheimer's Association (1992–2022)

Schizophrenia and Depression (now known as the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation) (1994)

(1994–1997) as well as of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Chapter of the

In Aging Award (1998–2002)

with Dementia in AD, LBD, and PD" (July, 2001) and “Genetics of Alzheimer’s Disease (March, 2002) workshops organized by NIA and the National Institute on Neurological Diseases and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland, and the Organizing Committee of the 6th (Seville, Spain, 2003), 7th (Sorrento, Italy, 2005) and 8th (Salzburg, Austria, 2007) International Conferences On Progress In Alzheimer’s And Parkinson’s Disease (2001-2009).

To help the public understand what is needed to cure and/or prevent disorders like AD, Trojanowski led an effort to prepare two education films, “Shining a Light on Alzheimer’s Disease.

. . through Research” and “Taking the Steps to Healthy Brain Aging”, on Alzheimer's disease and healthy brain aging funded by a grant from the Metropolitan Life Foundation Grant that air on PBS.

Frontotemporal Dementia (2003–2022)

Aging Research, and the 2005 Rous-Whipple Award of the American Society for

Investigative Pathology.

and has been on the editorial board of several neuroscience

and pathology journals.

served and continued to serve on local and national aging research committees