Ioannis received his Ph.D. from the Center for Drug Discovery, at Northeastern University of Boston in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2012. His Graduate work employed combination of experimental and computational techniques to probe the catalytic mechanism, and inhibitor profiles of enzymes involved in endocannabinoid hydrolysis, especially monoacylglycerol lipase (MGL). He detailed hMGL dynamics associated with the catalytic cycle and recognition of small-molecule inhibitors using Hydrogen Deuterium Exchange Mass Spectrometry (HDX-MS) and NMR approaches. Computationally, he applied docking procedures to explore the binding poses of known MGL inhibitors to assist structure based drug discovery. In 2012 Ioannis joined Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center as a postdoctoral research fellow in medicine, where he focused on understanding the structural and functional consequences of protein-protein interactions. He used NMR spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography combined with molecular biology tools for protein expression and biochemical techniques for protein purification and characterization.
"Active-site Inhibitors Modulate the Dynamic Properties of Human Monoacylglycerol Lipase: A Hydrogen Exchange Mass Spectrometry Study" I. Karageorgos, T.E. Wales, D. R. Janero, N. Zvonok, V. K. Vemuri, J.R. Engen, A. Makriyannis, Biochemistry, 2013, 52(29), 5016–5026.
"Endocannabinoid Enzyme Engineering: Soluble Human Thio-Monoacylglycerol Lipase (sol-S-hMGL)" I. Karageorgos, N. Zvonok, D. R. Janero, V. K. Vemuri, V. Shukla, T. E. Wales, J. r. Engen, A. Makriyannis, ACS Chem Neurosci. 2012 May 16; 3(5):393-399.
"Identification by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of an active-site hydrogen-bond network in human monoacylglycerol lipase (hMGL): implications for hMGL dynamics, pharmacological inhibition, and catalytic mechanism", I. Karageorgos, S. Tyukhtenko, N. Zvonok, D. R. Janero, C. Sallum, A. Makriyannis, Mol. Biosyst. 2010 Aug; 6(8):1381-1388.
"Covalent inhibitors of human monoacylglycerol lipase: ligand-assisted characterization of the catalytic site by mass spectrometry and mutational analysis", N. Zvonok, L. Pandarinathan, J. Williams, M. Johnston, I. Karageorgos, D.R. Janero, S.C. Krishnan, A. Makriyannis, Chem Biol. 2008 Aug 25; 15(8):854-862.
2008 - 2012 Recipient of an NIH Graduate Training Grant through the Pharmaceutical Sciences Program at Northeastern University of Boston
2011 Northeastern University certificate of excellence for outstanding presentation in the category f Health Sciences and Technology, at the Research and Scholarship Expo, 2011
2009 - Present Honor member of the Beta Tau Chapter of the Rho Chi Society
2021 U.S. Department of Commerce Silver Medal