The Department of Neurology at UMass Chan Medical School originated in 1977.

Since the beginning, David A. Drachman, MD, original Chair of Neurology worked to increase scientific awareness of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological diseases which continues to drive our department’s research, education, and treatment-care centers forward.  

Dr. Drachman was an early pioneer of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and other dementia research. In 1982, Drachman was recognized by President Reagan for pioneering the first five Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology Centers of Excellence with funding awards of one million dollars a year. Drachman opened one of the centers at UMass. In 2015, Dr. Drachman authored an article, ‘A century-plus of Alzheimer’s disease’ in Worcester Medicine’s September/October 2015 issue. He shared, “In 1982, following a meager grant review session, I was tasked with developing a plan to increase scientific interest in AD... I proposed 10 National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Alzheimer Centers of Excellence at $1 million each per year. With the impetus of Senator Ted Kennedy and Representative Claude Pepper, five centers were founded with NIH funding in 1984. Research interest rose dramatically with the money.”  

Dr. Drachman’s task to increase scientific awareness of AD continues to live on through his1984 publication, in Neurology, and is a major source of medical knowledge, which shared criteria to diagnose AD, Clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease | Neurology, it has been cited over 19,985 times.   

In the early days of UMass Chan and the formation of the Neurology Department, many of our current team members have had the privilege of working closely with Dr. Drachman.   

Our department’s history with neurological disorders and research is part of Drachman’s legacy for our department. Sandra Almeida, PhD, AM Barrett, MD, Fen-Biao Gao, PhD, Daryl Bosco, PhD, Robert H. Brown, MD, DPhil, Rigel Chan, PhD, Nils Henninger, MD, PhD, Lawrence Hayward, MD, PhD, John Landers, PhD, Jeanne Lawrence, PhD, Majaz Moonis, MD, JeanPierre SchatzmannPeron, PhD, Thomas Smith, MD, and Joan Swearer, PhD, have focused on various perspectives of AD, or related dementias.  

At the time of Dr. Drachman’s death, he was working on a manuscript to publish research findings with Thomas Smith, MD, of UMass Chan, Department of Pathology, Bassam Alkamachi, Theranostix Laboratory, Beltsville, MD, and Kevin Kane, Health Statistics and Geography Lab, Division of Preventative and Behavioral Medicine, at UMass Chan. His team contributed the final edits, and the featured article was accepted for publication in 2017, by The Alzheimer’s Association, Microvascular changes in Down syndrome with Alzheimer’s-type pathology: Insights into a potential vascular mechanism for Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease.    

Another Drachman manuscript was published in 2022, with the help and support of Dr. Henninger, Dr. Degrush, and Dr. Shazeeb, the team was able to finish and publish Dr. Drachman's final pilot study looking at arterial spin labeling MRI data in AD to pull together the NOTCH theory and microvascular changes in AD in BMC, Alzheimer’s Research and Therapy, titled ‘Cumulative effect of simvastatin, L-arginine, and tetrahydrobiopterin on cerebral blood flow and cognitive function in Alzheimer’s disease,’ with co-authors, Elizabeth Degrush, MD,  Mohammad Salman Shazeeb, MD,  David A. Drachman, MD, principal investigator, and Zeynep Vardar, Clifford Lindsay, Matthew J. Gounis, Nils Henninger, MD, PhD in collaboration with the Department of Neurology, Department of Psychiatry,  Image Processing and Analysis Core (iPAC), and the New England Center for Stroke Research, of the Department of Radiology at UMass Chan.