Robert David Moir was an Australian-born medical research scientist who theorized that the over-accumulation of beta-amyloid, which had formed to protect the brain against microbes, aided the development of Alzheimer's disease in the human brain.
15 Facts About Robert Moir
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Robert Moir was born in Kojonup in Western Australia to Terrence and Mary Moir who were farmers and had three siblings, Margaret, Andrew and Catherine.
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Robert Moir said he only learnt to read and write at age twelve but became an avid reader of all things scientific.
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Robert Moir received his PHD in 1996 from the University of Melbourne, supervised by neuropathologist Dr Colin L Masters.
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Robert Moir had met Tanzi at a medical conference in Amsterdam.
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Robert Moir was able to purify and produce quantities of the molecule which the brain used to make the beta-amyloid.
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Robert Moir concentrated initially in Tanzi's work on establishing what genes affected the risk of Alzheimer's disease.
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Robert Moir continued working for Tanzi as a post-doctoral fellow and would eventually become an assistant professor in neurology at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital and his own laboratory at the institution.
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Tanzi's work at the time focused on genes that increased the risk of getting Alzheimer's disease and the inbuilt ability of some to fight germs so Robert Moir proposed that beta-amyloid might have an anti-microbial effect in Alzheimer's.
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Tanzi encouraged Robert Moir to continue research into the use of beta-amyloids to kill pathogens, funding it out of the former's research funding.
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Robert Moir succeeded in this theory 2009 when he finally replicated the process in vitro.
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Robert Moir struggled for many years to obtain funding for his research, like many in his field, as those reviewing funding applications and those vetting papers for possible publication viewed alternative explanations for the causes of Alzheimer's Disease as misguided.
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The Robert Moir Lab focused on the biochemical and cellular mechanisms involved in neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease and ageing.
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Robert Moir died in a hospice in Milton, Massachusetts from the effects of glioblastoma.
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Robert Moir had three children; Alexander Moir, with his first wife Elena Vaillancourt, and Maxwell and Holly with his wife, Julie Alperen.