Alzheimer’s Disease is characterized by amyloid plaques and tau tangles. Understanding their role in pathology is crucial for developing a treatment for this yet incurable disease.  Professor Jürgen Götz generated the first transgenic mouse model with a tau pathology.  By combining a transgenic with a transplantation approach he proved the amyloid cascade hypothesis, a concept central in the field, and showed that amyloid induces a tau pathology.  He also demonstrated that tau is needed for amyloid to exert toxicity, by ‘axonal’ tau assuming a previously unidentified function in dendrites.  He developed a novel scanning ultrasound approach to reduce amyloid toxicity.