At a small liberal arts college in Colchester, Vt., scientists may have discovered something that could change the lives of tens of millions of people worldwide — and the nearly 17,000 Vermonters over the age of 65 who live with Alzheimer’s Disease. One of these scientists, Dr. Ruth Fabian-Fine, director of the Neuroscience Program at St. Michael’s College, has for over twenty years been studying the brains of spiders, probing deep into their neurons, and recently finding there a major clue into how neurodegeneration, including in humans, might be caused.
This week, Fabian-Fine spoke at length with the Standard about her research — conducted with her collaborative teams at St. Michael’s, the Vermont Biomedical Research Network, and the University of Vermont — as well as her hopes, what keeps her up at night, and next steps toward possible treatment for those suffering from Alzheimer’s.
First things first: Why spiders? According to Fabian-Fine, she chose spiders because of the large size of their neurons, which — like those of giant squid, whose brains helped scientists win the Nobel Prize in 1963 — allow for easier, more expedient laboratory research. It was Fabian-Fine’s move to Vermont which created her first important obstacle. “When I came to Vermont, my spiders didn’t do well. They started to show onset of neurodegeneration at ages where they would be ordinarily young, healthy adults at the age of one. I had to stop my study because the spiders developed neurodegeneration. And I thought to myself, ‘Oh, I’m losing this colony.’ I decided to investigate what causes this neurodegeneration in these animals.”
As in many scientific discoveries, the initial impediment led to a rethinking of the problem and pushed the scientist into new territory. Fabian-Fine searched the neurons of the spiders (10 times as large as those of humans) and found something surprising — a canal system in which myelination occurs at the cell body. Based on current knowledge, myelination creates a protective coating around neuron processes in order to assist their nerve signals. Fabian-Fine had been taught at both the Masters and doctoral level that invertebrates are thought not to have myelination, but she says her eyes told her something different. “I saw a lot of myelination, especially around the cell bodies where it forms canal structures that project into the neurons and internalize waste,” she explains. “These canals are so clear and abundant. And that is when it dawned on me, because I saw that in degenerating animals these canal systems basically had structural abnormalities. They unraveled and depleted the entire content of the neuron into these canals.”
It was at this moment in her research that Fabian-Fine began to consider the implications on humans — in particular those with Alzheimer’s disease.
For more on this, please see our October 2 edition of the Vermont Standard.
