Rebecca and Victor Ionasescu

IONASESCU

Posted By: Harvey W Henry (email)
Date: 4/3/2010 at 08:47:52

Rebecca Ionasescu, 86 Victor
Ionasescu, 83
Iowa City Press-Citizen
April 3, 2010

Dr. Rebecca Ionasescu, also known as Gabi, passed
away suddenly on February 12, 2010, at age 86. She
was a vibrant woman, with a keen intelligence and a
generous heart, whose dedication to her work and
the people around her made her very special.

Her death was followed by her husband's, Dr. Victor
V. Ionasescu, 83, just 12 days later, on February 24,
2010. He had sensed her death even before he was
told, and his condition worsened after a long
illness. He was a driven scientist with an inquisitive
mind, a captivating storyteller and teacher with an
exquisite sense of humor.

Theirs is a love story that spanned 63 years. Victor
and Gabi met in 1945 in medical school in
Bucharest, Romania, shortly after the end of World
War II. A colleague introduced them so they could
find comfort in each other after the death of Gabi's
father and Victor's sister that year. They started
dating in 1947, married in 1951. Their relationship
was founded on their shared love for medicine, and
desire to help and heal people.

Dr. Victor Ionasescu specialized in neurology. The
Romanian scientist, George Palade and his
discovery of ribosomes, which led to a Nobel Prize
in 1974, inspired him. Victor began his own
research in muscular dystrophy using ribosomes
extracted from muscle biopsies of patients with the
disease. His research was soon limited by the
technological and economic means of Romania,
which was a communist country at that time. His
research required the use of a refrigerated
centrifuge, which was not available. It was then that

he decided to come to United States to pursue his
research ideas. His wife supported him in this
endeavor and, when he left in 1968, she stayed
behind with their two daughters. They eventually
were able to reunite in United States three years
later. So began Victor's professional career at the
University of Iowa Hospitals, in the department of
Pediatric Neurology.

In 1969, Dr. Victor Ionasescu initiated his research
in the Duchenne type of muscular dystrophy, which
was published in 1971 under the title "Ribosomal
Protein Synthesis in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy".

Dr. Rebecca (Gabi) Ionasescu, who specialized in
internal medicine and conducted research in
immunology back in Romania, joined Victor in the
1970s in his neuromuscular laboratory doing tissue
cultures in Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Gabi
became an expert at tissue cultures of muscle cells
and studied media formulation in the lab of Dr.
Richard Ham, who developed many of the serum-
free media formulations used by labs today. Gabi
then went on to learn the special techniques
required for research in a type of genetic nerve
disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropathy. In
1982, Victor and Gabi began their work with
Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropathy and spent 15
years searching for the genes that cause the
debilitating disease. Victor along with his wife spent
a sabbatical year at Oxford University in the lab of
Dr. Kay Davies learning the specialized recombinant
DNA techniques, which allowed them to carry out
this research. Victor had one of the largest
databases of patients afflicted with this disease in U.
S, which was the foundation of his genetics lab.

Both husband and wife eventually traced the disease
to several faulty genes by means of a technique
called genetic linkage using recombinant DNA.
Their findings were published in medical journals