Ronald Schnaar, Ph.D., is the John Jacob Abel Professor of Pharmacology and a Professor of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. His biomedical research focuses on the roles of glycans and glycan recognition in the physiology and pathology of the nervous and immune systems. He has performed and directed glycobiology research for nearly 50 years. His biomedical research team discovered that gangliosides, major glycans of nerve cells and axons, function in axon-myelin interactions, including the stabilization of axons and the control of axon regeneration after injury. His team identified glycans on human neutrophils that initiate neutrophilic inflammation and glycans in airways that regulate human eosinophilic and mast cell (allergic) inflammation. In their latest studies, his team discovered a unique glycan in the human brain that regulates debris clearance and has implications for Alzheimer’s disease progression.

To learn more, visit the Schnaar lab website.