NIA Welcomes New Program Head

December 27, 1996

Marcelle Morrison-Bogorad, Ph.D., is the newly appointed associate director of the National Institute on Aging's (NIA) Neuroscience and Neuropsychology of Aging (NNA) Program. She brings to the Institute a special interest in aging and Alzheimer's disease as well as a rich background in brain research.

"Dr. Morrison-Bogorad is familiar with the Institute and with the broad field of neuroscience supported by the NNA Program," says NIA Director Dr. Richard J. Hodes. "She has served on NNA Program project committees, provided a number of ad hoc reviews for NIA projects and for Alzheimer's centers, and been an active member of the Alzheimer's Association's Medical and Scientific Advisory Board. We look forward to her arrival in early January."

In talking about the challenges of her new position, Dr. Morrison-Bogorad expresses her enthusiasm about being a part of the NNA Program. "The mix of basic and applied research and of different scientific disciplines is synergistic. Equally important is the need to stay focused on something as important as Alzheimer's disease. There has to be a concentrated effort on developing methods for early detection and on delaying the onset of the disease."

Professional History

Dr. Morrison-Bogorad earned a Ph.D. at Glasgow University in Scotland. She spent several years isolating and characterizing messenger RNA molecules, and then went to Cincinnati to do a post-doctoral fellowship with the scientist who had first isolated messenger RNA from a eukaryotic source.

"It was about this time that I became interested in applying the techniques of molecular biology to study the brain. Very little had been done on the sort of molecular biology that I was doing; studying what genes are made into messenger RNA's, what messenger RNA's are made into what proteins, and how these processes regulate brain development and function. It was a time when scientists doing brain research were suspicious of anyone involved in molecular biology and vice versa, and there I was right in the middle."

Work on the molecular biology of messenger RNA's and protein synthesis was in its infancy at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas when Dr. Morrison-Bogorad joined its faculty in 1975. She rose through the faculty ranks at Southwestern to become Professor of Neurology. She taught, conducted laboratory research on the development of the brain, and involved herself in many other activities including committee and review work. Most recently she has been working on stress proteins in the brain and their possible roles in protecting brain cells from death and accumulation of abnormal proteins in aging and Alzheimer's disease.

When asked how close researchers are to solving the mysteries of Alzheimer's, Dr. Morrison-Bogorad responds, "We're working with a disease of the brain, the most complicated organ in the body. Learning about Alzheimer's and how it affects the brain is a slow process in terms of prevention and treatment. However, the pace of basic research on Alzheimer's is amazingly fast, and we put more bits of the puzzle together almost daily."

Dr. Morrison-Bogorad was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. She graduated from the University of Aberdeen, earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research at Glasgow University, and has been on the faculty at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas for the last 21 years. She will join the NIA staff in January 1997.