Dr. Melanie Martin
Dr. Melanie Martin, an associate professor of Physics at the University of Winnipeg and the Director of the Magnetic Resonance Microscopy Centre in the Department of Radiology at the University of Manitoba, spends a lot of her time looking for ways to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease earlier and find effective ways to monitor treatments.
Dr. Martin uses Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in her research on mice. When she first started using MRI to view the brains in mice, the technology was not advanced enough to see Beta-Amyloid Plaques inside the living brain. These plaques are abnormal protein masses which occur inside the brain of people who have Alzheimer’s.
“Now that we can see them in living creatures, we are finding that the brain is very affected by the time the plaques are present,” she says. “We need to find earlier markers of the disease so that treatment can begin earlier and have a greater impact.”
In 2008, with new equipment, progress was made. One of Dr. Martin’s students found a way to measure the volume of the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for memory. “In humans, the hippocampus shrinks with Alzheimer’s,” she explains.
Dr. Martin says when they find a suitable mouse model with a hippocampus that shrinks in a similar fashion, it will be possible to test different treatments to see if they are able to stop the shrinkage or at least slow it down. “We have collaborators that have treatments ready to try on mice,” she says
Dr. Martin and her team of students and postdocs can also detect damage to white matter, the part of the brain that actively affects how the brain learns and functions. They are now imaging mouse models of Alzheimer’s to determine if white matter damage could be an earlier marker of the disease.
Dr. Martin’s research team includes University of Winnipeg student Trevor Vincent; recent University of Winnipeg graduate, Kerrie Hayes; University of Manitoba student Sheryl Herrera; recent University of Manitoba graduate, Dr. Jonathan Thiessen, and Dr. Marzena Kastyak-Ibrahim, recipient of the Alzheimer Society’s Research Fellowship Award.
Together they are working to ensure future generations do not have to worry about the word dementia.
