By that time, it turned out this [ARIA] was not a unique protein. It had homologies to other proteins that had roles in glial formation, glial maturation, and also in certain malignant diseases. By that time, the name ARIA was old fashioned, and the family of proteins was changed. I think it was Martin Raff who changed it to Neuregulin, which I thought was perfect. But when your daughter gets married and someone changes her name, it's painful. When you've worked for 15 years on a protein and someone changes its name, it's unbearable.

We moved on from there, we had our protein. The N-terminal part of it was critical, this is the part facing extracellularly. And we hypothesized that it was cleaved at some stage and released into the synaptic cleft, where it diffused across the cleft, bound to neuregulin receptors, which were called ERBs. But there are many different types of ERB receptors, but ErbB4 was the most important one at the neuromuscular junction. That was the apex of my career at the neuromuscular junction.