Caitlin Fowler

M.Eng Candidate, Biological and Biomedical Engineering Program

Caitlin is a new graduate student in the Near lab having just started a Master’s degree in the Biological and Biomedical Engineering program at McGill University in January 2017. Her background comes from a B.Sc in Biochemistry and an honours project examining changes in lipid metabolism under hypoxic conditions in a Alzheimer’s disease (AD) mouse model. A keen interest in neurodegenerative diseases led Caitlin to Dr. Jamie Near’s lab where her current project also examines rodent models of Alzheimer’s disease; Caitlin’s research aims to assess longitudinal changes in neurochemistry, neuroanatomy, and metabolism in a relatively new transgenic rat model of AD (TgF344-AD) under treatment conditions, measured at 6, 12, 18, and 24 months of age. The choice of animal model, in combination with the fact that 1) the in vivo Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) methods to be used are fully translatable to human AD subjects, and 2) the neurochemical changes observed in animal models of AD are consistent with changes in MRS studies of AD in humans, will allow for the development of diagnostic techniques and therapeutics that are applicable to human AD studies.