Professor Elaine Del Bel, University of Sao Paolo, Brazil

https://doi.org/10.36866/122.40

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to do my postdoc in England, in Manchester, where I learned a bit about the British people. I learned to enjoy scones, Irish butter, and most of all, English tea!

Back then, the first member of The Society I met was Professor David Brown, and I went to my first Society conference under his tutelage. I remember I asked him: if The Physiological Society holds joint congresses, why has there never been a joint meeting with the Brazilian Society of Physiology? That was the magic question! Several successful conferences were organised after this between the two societies.

Generous travel grants from The Society meant that I could attend conferences almost every year. Some faces became familiar to me, from Society staff to physiologists. In the last few years I was invited to give talks, which terrified me at first but also made me very proud.

It feels like I then suddenly became a Fellow Member of The Society! I see this as an opportunity to continue to spread the word about what The Society has brought me, personally and academically. In addition to outstanding science and the possibility to have in-person interactions with other scientists, The Society showed itself to be open, inclusive, and generous. This is why I was, and still am, delighted to be part of this community.

My scientific origin story: physiology in Brazil

I think I was born a nerd, but I certainly did not have a trajectory for my life laid out. I took the opportunity to do a postgraduate degree where I dedicated myself entirely and managed to find myself.

I have no recipe for success, but what I did was work hard, while also taking care of my mental health. I have always made time for reading (devouring books in the library), enjoying cooking and taking care of plants, in my house and garden. The birth of my daughter, and the unconditional love I had for a little being, gave me another reason for balance.

One of the biggest barriers for me was the English language. The time spent in England was of paramount importance to overcome the difficulty I had with speaking the language. As I connected with more people, scientific partnerships started to appear, during meetings and courses, because of friendships and mutual scientific interest. The postdoc and then the international congresses, the organisation of visits to laboratories in Germany, England, France, and the USA, helped to open doors.

Foreign researchers eventually managed to get out of their comfort zone and came to see a little of the science that is done in countries like Brazil. They learnt that there is a struggling and intelligent population.

Our challenges in Brazil are many and fundamental, such as inadequate funding and inconsistency in the value that the government places on education and science.

We are a nation in which there isn’t gender equality nor equality for other marginalised groups. There are powerful prejudices along the lines of race and socioeconomic status. This is a matter of justice and rights and we are still far from solving it.

But, the community is strong and united, and still young! You learn to do good scientific research even if invited to the seaside by the sun shining outside. We often have a natural instinct for working with animals, which is not easy. Despite our difficulties, we have been able to maintain research excellence in physiology, training a new generation who will be able to continue to understand scientific advances.

My current research

I have a passion for imaging different microstructures (such as neurons and glial cells) that make up the central nervous system. The shape of the cells is art to me; they are vigilant and change in response to the physiological conditions of the environment. Observing them can teach us a tremendous amount.

I have been studying Parkinsonism in rodents, induced by lesions of dopaminergic neurons. I analyse the effect of drugs that may protect these neurons.

Recently, an antibiotic called doxycycline (6-deoxy-5-hydroxytetracycline) has emerged as a potential treatment for Parkinson’s disease. Our group of Parkinson’s disease researchers made the discovery while modelling the disease in mice.

We noticed that only two of the 40 mice that were administered 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) developed the motor features of Parkinson’s disease while the rest remained healthy. We realised that this was because the mice had mistakenly been fed chow containing doxycycline. Doxycycline is second-generation tetracycline antibiotic increasingly being used in neurodegenerative diseases treatment due to their anti-inflammatory features. Previous evidence demonstrated doxycycline protection to dopaminergic neurons.

Our hypothesis was that it might have protected the dopaminergic neurons from the toxic effect of the 6-OHDA. We repeated the experiment, adding another group of mice, which were given doxycycline in low doses by subcutaneous injection and fed on normal food. Both groups demonstrated that sub-antibiotic doses of doxycycline have a statistically significant neuroprotective effect.

An accidental discovery of this sort can be a lucky thing, especially since doxycycline has been shown to be safe, and is an FDA-approved agent.

In view of the long-established and safe clinical use of tetracycline, we propose that these drugs could be an adjunctive therapy to the dopamine precursor treatment called levodopa (L-Dopa) to prevent the development of dyskinaesia.

Dyskinaesias are abnormal involuntary jerking movements that appear when plasma and brain levels of L-Dopa are high. More than 50% of patients will begin to develop motor fluctuations and dyskinaesia between 5 and 10 years after the start of L-Dopa therapy, with 20%–30% developing dyskinaesia after less than two years.

There are no cures for Parkinson’s disease and the treatment is simply symptomatic. Dyskinaesia is a highly disabling condition for the patient.

We continue to investigate this drug and others that can be used to treat Parkinson’s disease and the side effects that can result from existing treatments.

My career today

A crucial moment in my career was when I decided that I would try to do what really motivated me to be alive, which was learning and studying. I quit a stable job and chose to live through an era of career uncertainties. The path was hard, with hesitation, tumbles, and mishaps.

But I got where I am, a professor at one of the best universities in Brazil, even though I am a woman in Latin America, from a family of workers, with no academic background. It still feels unbelievable sometimes.

I do wonder what chances I have to be a protagonist in the competitive field of brain physiology. I really do not know. What I do know is that I can give local people the opportunity to learn the language of science, so to speak.

I can encourage the young people who come to me. I hope to show them that even with all the problems we have in Brazil, we cannot turn off the light and close the door. Courage and struggle can bring us an inner peace and a life that is “rich” in a way. We are going through an extremely challenging time, both locally and globally.

In this very difficult, ungoverned country where it is still debated whether or not vaccines have value, whether scientific knowledge is worth anything (and whether the earth is flat!), social differences have come even more into the foreground in the last year. The dismantling of public universities and scientific funding is now reaching an unsustainable degree. The difficulty in fighting back effectively makes me feel powerless and incapable.

Despite being exhausted from the sadness and the horror of the moment in my country, I am observing the changing seasons in nature, cooking more, and working from my veranda, somehow, managing to enjoy life. Despite all this, I continue guiding students, having daily or weekly virtual meetings, and discussing science. Because life will go on.