Michael A. Zasloff (born July 2, 1946) is an American

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

, medical researcher, and entrepreneur. Zasloff is primarily known for his work on antimicrobial peptides.

Early life

Michael Alan Zasloff was born to a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family, the son a dentist and an artist. Growing up on Manhattan's West Side, he studied at the

Bronx High School of Science The Bronx High School of Science, commonly called Bronx Science, is a public specialized high school in The Bronx in New York City. It is operated by the New York City Department of Education. Admission to Bronx Science involves passing the Sp ...

Education

Zasloff did his undergraduate work at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

and earned his M.D. and Ph.D. from the

New York University School of Medicine NYU Grossman School of Medicine is a medical school of New York University, a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1841 and is one of two medical schools of the university, with the other being the Long Island School of ...

. He did his residency training in pediatrics at the

Boston Children's Hospital Boston Children's Hospital formerly known as Children's Hospital Boston until 2012 is a nationally ranked, freestanding acute care children's hospital located in Boston, Massachusetts, adjacent both to its teaching affiliate, Harvard Medical Scho ...

and a research fellowship at

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

. In 1975 he joined the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

(NIH) as a postdoc.

Professional career

Zasloff stayed at the NIH after he finished his postdoc, and in 1981 he was made the Chief of the Human Genetics Branch of the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development. In 1986 he discovered

magainin The magainins are a class of antimicrobial peptides found in the African clawed frog (''Xenopus laevis''). The peptides are cationic, generally lack a stable conformation in water but form amphipathic α-helix in membranes; their mechanism agains ...

s, a family of antimicrobial peptides in the skin of the African clawed frog. Magainin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. was founded in the late 1980s to commercialize the peptides. Zasloff left the NIH at about the same and went to University of Pennsylvania, in part because the NIH policies made it difficult for him to participate in the company. Magainin eventually went public and its name was changed to Genaera. The company attempted to develop squalamine,

trodusquemine Trodusquemine is an aminosterol (a polyamine-steroid) similar to squalamine that is an allosteric inhibitor of protein-tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B). It was isolated from the dogfish shark by scientists at Magainin Pharmaceuticals (subsequentl ...

, and pexiganan (a version of a magainin), but the company closed in 2009 without having brought any products to market. At Penn, working with Fred Kaplan, Zasloff continued research he had begun at the NIH on the cause and treatment of

fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (; FOP; also called Münchmeyer disease and formerly called myositis ossificans progressiva or Stoneman disease) is an extremely rare connective tissue disease in which fibrous connective tissue such as mus ...

. Zasloff left Penn in 1992 and joined Magainin full time. He was with the company until its lead product, pexiganan, was rejected by the FDA in 1999 for lack of efficacy compared with the standard of care for diabetic foot ulcers, and he went to Georgetown University's medical school, where he was appointed Dean for Research and Translational Science. In 2011 Zasloff found that squalamine had antiviral activity. In 2013 Zasloff co-founded a company called Formula XO that sold haircare products. He later co-founded a company called Enterin, that intended to develop a derivative of squalamine called kenterin as a treatment for Parkinson's disease; the company received its first round of venture funding in 2017.

Personal life

Zasloff is married to Dr. Barbara Zasloff, a clinical psychologist (whom he met when they were undergraduates at Columbia University), and they have three daughters.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zasloff, Michael Living people 21st-century American biologists American medical researchers Jewish American scientists Jewish physicians The Bronx High School of Science alumni Columbia University alumni New York University Grossman School of Medicine alumni 1946 births Scientists from New York (state) 21st-century American Jews