A. Nazlı Başak, graduated from The German Highschool in Istanbul and was awarded a DAAD scholarship to study in Germany. Nazlı earned her BS degree in Chemistry from the University of Göttingen, Germany, and completed her MSc and PhD degrees in Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine in Göttingen under the scientific guidance of Prof. Friedrich Cramer on nucleic acid biochemistry, the tRNA molecule and protein biosynthesis mechanisms. After three years of postdoctoral research work and five years of research assistance at MPI in Göttingen, she returned to Turkey in 1985 to pursue her academic career at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul.
Dr. Başak’s career at Boğaziçi University started with the establishment of DNA techniques used in the early detection and prevention of hereditary blood disorders. She was instrumental in the establishment of a fully equipped molecular biology and genetics laboratory for the first time in Turkey. Her research laboratory at Boğaziçi University, in collaboration with the Turkish Ministry of Health, played a major role in the implication of a comprehensive nation-wide prevention program for the early prenatal diagnosis of thalassemias and abnormal hemoglobins, based on DNA analysis, in Turkey. Dr. Başak was promoted to associate professor of molecular biology and genetics in 1986 and to a full professor in 1991 at Bogaziçi University.
At the end of 1990s Nazli Başak’s research interest shifted from monogenic blood diseases towards complex brain disorders. Dr. Başak’s current research agenda focuses on neurodegenerative disease genetics. With her interest in mechanisms giving rise to neurodegeneration, she was appointed in 2005 as the director of NDAL (Neurodegeneration Research Laboratory), established by the prestigious Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation at Boğaziçi University. NDAL from its beginning has been involved in several national and international collaborations, including multi-centered European projects.
Currently, NDAL is the turkish partner of several Transnational Consortia Projects. To count a few, Project MinE is a multinational collaborative effort to solve ALS. Another international collaboration, with Dr. Başak as the PI on the Turkish side, is the PROSPAX project, the goal of which is to understand spastic ataxias, to find novel genes and prepare therapies. Her lab is also a member of the ASAP/GP2 initiative and many other consortia on neurodegenerative disease biology, like the RFC1 Consortium, Solve-RD Research Project and the Genesis Platform.
NDAL regularly hosts the prestigious Suna Kıraç Conferences on Neurodegeneration Istanbul in collaboration with UMass and Harvard Medical Schools and the Suna Kıraç Workshops on Genetic Models of Neurodegenerative Disease with Brown University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science. The laboratory has a nationwide recognition as a center of excellence in the molecular diagnosis of common and rare neurological diseases in Turkey. The translocation of NDAL to Koç University’s Medical School in 2018, enabling a tighter interaction with specialist clinicians and hospitals, enhanced the visibility and efficiency of NDAL, exponentially increasing the number of international collaborations and consortia established in recent years which, in turn, accelerated the number of prestigious publications in high-ranked journals.
