Don Zack, M.D., Ph.D., is a vision researcher extraordinaire. His work on photoreceptor cells in the retina that sense light and retinal ganglion cells that transmit information from the eye to the brain has transformed our understanding of how diseases such as retinal degenerations and glaucoma lead to vision loss. His lab at the Wilmer Eye Institute has already translated these insights into potential new glaucoma treatments — “neuroprotective” drugs that interrupt the process of cell death and, hence, progression of the disease. Even more exciting, his team has spent years figuring out how to convert stem cells into retinal ganglion cells, which they hope will eventually lead to simple injections into the eye to actually reverse vision loss.
“I’d die a very happy person if we could get close to restoring vision to people,” says Zack. “That’s the ultimate dream.”
Zack is the Guerrieri Family Professor of Ophthalmology and director of the Center for Stem Cells and Ocular Regenerative Medicine at Wilmer, as well as a professor in the departments of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Neuroscience, and Genetic Medicine. He has won numerous awards for his work and has now been named winner of the prestigious Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB) David F. Weeks Award for Outstanding Vision Research for 2022, an honor bestowed by both the RPB and the Association of University Professors of Ophthalmology.
His longtime friend and collaborator at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Anand Swaroop, Ph.D., can’t think of anyone more deserving. “Don has always worked at the cutting edge of the kind of research we do and has made so many contributions to the field,” says Swaroop, who is himself an award-winning researcher at NIH, where his lab does similar work with photoreceptors — nerve cells in the eye, like rods and cones, that collect light and whose deaths are implicated in diseases like macular degeneration.
“Don has always recognized the potential of new research technologies earlier than most people,” says Swaroop. “In the early days, he was one of the first to use transgenic mouse [mice that had been genetically altered] technology. More recently, he has pioneered the use of stem cell technologies and other novel research tools very effectively.”
Swaroop marvels at the sheer breadth of Zack’s research. “Most researchers focus either on ganglion cells or photoreceptors,” he says. “Don does both.” And while most of their peers were focusing solely on gene research, Zack also started working with small molecules because they can be used to study biological function and develop new medications to inhibit specific disease processes. Small-molecule drugs are chemically synthesized therapeutics that can easily enter cells — and alter other molecules for therapeutic effect — because of their low molecular weight. Zack has already developed several small-molecule drugs that have the potential to help prevent blindness in glaucoma by interfering with the nerve cell death process.
“Conventional glaucoma treatment focuses on controlling pressure in the eye, but this is a new approach that addresses the root cause of disease,” Swaroop says.
But Swaroop says it’s not only Zack’s gift for innovation that sets him apart. “It’s his gift for collaboration. Don is a good person, a very good teacher, very open-minded, very willing to share his findings and ideas, and it’s incredibly easy to collaborate with him,” Swaroop says. “So, he has not only created a wealth of knowledge himself, he has created a network of collaborators and students who are also creating knowledge, and that is a wonderful legacy.”
Zack is himself emphatic that anything he has achieved during his 33 years at Wilmer has everything to do with the people he has worked with and the synergy of the institution. “Wilmer is very collaborative,” he says. “There are lots of wonderful, skilled people to work with. And Hopkins has great scientists, so outside of Wilmer, you can always find somebody who’s an expert in whatever you happen to be interested in. I’ve been very lucky and very happy here.”
He talks about his mentors. He talks about the people in his lab. “The PI, or principal investigator, gets all the credit, but the people who do the science every day — they’re the ones who make things happen,” he says. He talks about colleagues beyond Johns Hopkins, like Swaroop, who have exchanged ideas with him over the years.
And he talks about donors. “There is no way we could do any of this without funding, and we need more of it if we are going to achieve our research goals,” he says. The promise of stem cell technology is the great hope for so many patients. And though researchers are getting tantalizingly close — his lab’s ganglion cells are now being tested in animal studies at labs around the country — Zack says they are still probably years away from being able to actually use these cells to treat patients. Government funding is vital but insufficient, and generous private donors make all the difference, he says.
Among Zack’s supporters is M. Alan Guerrieri, a very successful poultry farmer from Maryland’s Eastern Shore who, through his family foundation, has been supporting vital work at Wilmer and The Johns Hopkins University for nearly three decades. Zack’s endowed professorship and the Alan Guerrieri Family Research Endowment in Retinal Diseases are two of the many substantial gifts he has bestowed.
“Alan has been fantastically generous in supporting our research, and donations like his make our work possible,” Zack says.
Guerrieri, who first came to Wilmer in the early 1990s for surgery to repair a detached retina, decided he liked what he saw and wanted to help. “I heard wonderful things from Mort Goldberg [professor of ophthalmology and director emeritus of the Wilmer Eye Institute] about Don from the time I first got involved,” says Guerrieri, a member of the Wilmer Board of Governors and past member of the National Council for Johns Hopkins Medicine. “His work is amazing and important, and I am very proud to be able to contribute to it.