Deutches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE)

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Dragomir Milovanovic, Ph.D.


dragomir.milovanovic at dzne.de
Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience
German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE)
Charitéplatz 1, intern: Virchowweg 6
10117 Berlin
Germany


ORCID: 0000-0002-6625-1879
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Drago is fascinated by how thousands of macromolecules and organelles self-organize at the synaptic boutons, the communication sites between neurons. Since January 2020, he runs the Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience within the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE). Drago pioneered the concept of liquid-liquid phase separation at the synapse (Milovanovic et al., Science 2018, Hoffmann et al., Nat Comm 2023), in which synaptic vesicles in nerve terminals can be organized as a distinct liquid phase, similarly to oil droplets in water. In fact, condensate biology is emerging as a major mechanism for understanding the organization of synapses (Sansevrino et al., Trends Neursci, 2023). The work from his lab showed that the condensates of synaptic vesicles act as a buffer recruiting disordered synaptic proteins such as alpha-synuclein, a protein implicated in the pathology of Parkinson's Disease. Recently, the lab discovered that condensates can harbor electric potential at their interfaces, suggesting a new function of condensates as mesoscale capacitors that can store charge (Hoffmann et al., Nano Letters, 2023).

Drago is a trained biochemist (Faculty of Chemistry, University of Belgrade, Serbia), did a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (now Multidisciplinary Sciences) in Göttingen (with R. Jahn and S. W. Hell) and a postdoc in neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine (with P. De Camilli). Since 2020, Drago is leading the Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) with the labs on the Charité Campus in Berlin and at the DZNE Headquarter in Bonn.

Drago's research has been funded by the Starting Grants from the European Research Council (ERC; 2024, MemLessInterface Young Investigator Program from the HFSP (2023), and the grants from the German Research Foundation (DFG, 2021) as well as the Collaborative Research Center (SFB 1286) on Quantitative Synaptology. Drago is an affiliate of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in Berkeley, California and has been awarded the Whitman Fellowship three consecutive years (2022-2024) to establish a summer lab at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.