Chemistry Research Attracts National Interest

Kent State University has captured the attention of the scientific community recently as a result of the combined efforts of doctoral student Edward Suarez-Moreira and his faculty mentor. He and Dr. Nicola Brasch are co-inventors of a procedure to synthesize vitamin B₁₂ derivative NAC-B₁₂.

Moreira was born in Uruguay, the smallest Spanish-speaking country in South America. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry at the Universidad de la República in Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital, where he worked as a research assistant until December 2003. However, his greater academic aspirations soon brought him to Kent State.

“In January 2004 I joined the Kent State/Cleveland Clinic biomedical sciences doctoral program under the guidance of Dr. Nicola Brasch and Dr. Donald Jacobsen,” Moreira says. “My current dissertation project focuses in understanding the chemistry and metabolism of vitamin B₁₂.”

Moreira also has been very active in student government, currently serving as executive chair on the Graduate Student Senate (GGS). He was first elected to the GSS in fall of 2004. Since then, he has been a part of the Provost Search Committee, the Graduate
Student Trustee Search Committee, the Symposium on Democracy Planning Committee and the Committee for Administrative Officers, among others.

The first major project Moreira worked on at Kent State was synthesizing derivatives of vitamin B₁₂. Working with Dr. Nicola Brasch, an expert in the field, he optimized a synthesis method of several B₁₂ derivatives, including NAC-B₁₂. These experiments may soon yield some very interesting insights on the beneficial roles vitamin B₁₂ has in the cardiovascular and central nervous systems.  His work on this project has been published in Dalton Transactions, a renowned inorganic chemistry journal.

“I have had great advice from both Dr. Brasch and Dr. Jacobsen,” Moreira says of his success. “They have given me a lot of scientific freedom, which has helped me grow as a scientist. Kent State has given me access to incredible resources, so imagination is the limit.”

Moreira expects to graduate in 2008 and pursue a career in academia. His goal is to land a job as a professor involved in both teaching and research. Someday, he would like to move up the ranks into university administration.

“I believe that to have a job with the potential to touch so many lives and to have a say in the course of higher education is priceless,” he says.

For more information on Moreira’s research, visit the Bioinorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Research Group Web site.