Michael Zasloff

Michael Zasloff
Dr. Michael A. Zasloff MD, Ph.D.
Residence	Georgetown, Washington, D.C. and Bala Cynwyd, PA
Citizenship	United States
Nationality	American
Fields	Pediatrics, Medicine, Surgery, Bioinformatics
Institutions	Georgetown University
Alma mater	Columbia College; New York University School of Medicine
Known for	Magainin Pharmaceuticals, magainin, squalamine, illumai
Notable awards	1994 Kilby International Award, 2012 ScD (Hon) Georgetown University

Michael A. Zasloff is an American doctor, immunologist, medical researcher, professor, and geneticist. He is currently Scientific Director, MedStar-Georgetown Transplant Institute, Georgetown University Hospital.

He is well known for his work on innate immunity and antimicrobial peptides including the discovery of Magainin from the frog Xenopus laevis and the identification of the essential amino acid isoleucine as an inducer of anti-microbial peptides.

In 1993 Zasloff reported the discovery of the aminosterol squalamine from the dogfish shark, Squalus acanthias. He founded the pharmaceutical company Magainin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He was Chief of the Genetics Branch of the NIH's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in the 1980s, and later, Upham Professor of Pediatrics and Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Human Genetics of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Between 2002-2004 he served as Dean of Research and Translational Science for Georgetown University School of Medicine. Currently he is at the Georgetown Transplant Institute of the Department of Surgery.

Dr. Zasloff received a B.A. from Columbia College in Chemistry and holds an M.D., Ph.D. from the New York University School of Medicine. He completed his Ph.D. under Dr. Severo Ochoa (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1959)

Zasloff completed residency training in Pediatrics at the Boston Children's Hospital. In 1975 he joined the National Institutes of Health as a Research Associate in the National Institutes of Arthritis, Metabolic and Digestive Diseases completing his post doctoral studies with Dr. Gary Felsenfeld, and concurrently completed a Fellowship in Human Genetics at Johns Hopkins with Dr. Victor McKusick.