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The seven graduate students in Michael Zagorski's chemistry lab conduct cutting-edge investigations into the proteins associated with the dementia from such devastating illnesses as Alzheimer's, Prion or "Mad Cow," and Parkinson Diseases, as well as the familial British dementia and Lewy-body associated dementia.
Zagorski's work as their advisor for their research work in chemistry has earned him the John S. Diekhoff Award, which honors outstanding graduate advising and teaching.
In Zagorski's lab, students must be self-starters and motivators. "My feeling is that if students are not motivated on their own, you can push them and push them, but it will only improve their performance a little bit," says Zagorski, who is , associate professor of chemistry.
Every year approximately two or three new students join his research group. Their work focuses on elucidating the mechanisms involved in amyloid plaque formation of several proteins -- the A beta-peptides, the Abri, and alpha synuclein -- that are the alleged culprits in the onset of dementia and form the amyloid plaques or tangles that kill neuron cells, resulting in memory loss. They use nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques to analyze synthetic proteins which resemble the ones found in the human brain.
Zagorski notes that over 10 years ago, while a researcher at the Suntory Institute for Biorganic Research in Japan, he chose to work on the proteins associated with Alzheimer's Disease. When he joined the CWRU faculty in 1983, he brought his National Institutes of Health-funded research project to CWRU.
"I am lucky that my research continues to generate to this interest among funders and the medical community," he says.
Recently the National Institutes of Health renewed a $1.17 million grant for five years to continue the study of amyloid plaques, with investigations into finding a substance that will inhibit the formation of these proteins into devastating amyloid plaques or tangles. He also has received a new two-year, $198,000 grant from the American Health Systems Foundation to support his research.
Zagorski also collaborates with other research groups, including Witold Surewicz and Frank Sonnischen on the Prion proteins, as well as Robert Freidland from CWRU's School of Medicine on a grant supported by Philip Morris on nicotine as a substance in preventing Alzheimer's disease.
Working with Roger Marchant from CWRU's biomedical engineering department and researchers from New York University, he is studying the Abri protein associated with the familial British dementia, a form of Alzheimer's that is genetic and strikes at an early age.
For the past three years, he has been a consultant to Parke Davis Inc., a pharmaceutical company that is also looking at the development of new drugs to combat the disease, as well as Johnson & Johnson Inc.
Through a fellowship from the NIH and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Zagorski will visit the Suntory Institute this summer to study solid state NMR techniques. This fellowship will begin a working relationship between Zagorski's lab and Suntory, where Japanese researchers will analyze protein samples created at CWRU. On his way to Japan, Zagorski and his wife and daughters will stop in China before his fellowship begins.
Zagorski earned his B.S. in chemistry from the State University of New York at Oneonta in 1978 and his Ph.D. from CWRU in 1983. Before traveling to Japan in 1989, he was am NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University and a research scientist at Columbia's College of Physicians & Surgeons.
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