Fiona H Mclean

Biography

Fiona graduated from the University of Dundee in 2012 with a Joint Honours in Biochemistry and Pharmacology. She went on to complete an EASTBIO BBSRC funded PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Aberdeen under the supervision of Professor Lynda Williams, Dr Fiona Campbell and Dr Rosamund Langston (University of Dundee). During her PhD she investigated the impact of a high-fat diet on memory. Following her PhD, Fiona is now a postdoctoral research scientist on a collaborative Wellcome Trust drug discovery project with the University of Sussex. The project is supervised by Professor Jeremy Lambert and Dr Rosamund Langston and is investigating novel compounds to treat Huntington’s disease.

Research Interest

Fiona’s research interests lie in learning and memory with a particular focus on neurodegenerative diseases. During her PhD she investigated how eating an unhealthy diet may lead to early cognitive decline. Alzheimer’s disease is now one of the biggest global killers, however there is no cure and limited treatments available.  It  is  therefore  crucial  to  understand  what  can  lead  to  the development of the disease. Obesity and type 2 diabetes, which are driven by a high-fat diet are associated with the development of premature cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. To further elucidate the link between diet and memory Fiona’s research investigated the effects of a high-fat diet on episodic and associative memory. The findings from her project showed that complex memory types are more vulnerable to impairment by a high-fat diet and that this can happen within days of consuming a high-fat diet. She also revealed that these deficits can be reversed by eating a low-fat diet. Following these findings, Fiona carried out proteomic studies showing that within days a high-fat diet can cause changes to proteins involved in metabolism, the immune system, cell signalling and the cytoskeleton. Further studies using hippocampal cell culture techniques revealed that the cytoskeleton of neurons is compromised by saturated fat however this can be alleviated by the presence of unsaturated fat. This research is currently submitted for publication. Fiona is currently a postdoctoral researcher on a Wellcome Trust funded drug discovery project in collaboration with the University of Sussex which aims to develop treatments for Huntington’s disease. Huntington’s disease is an inherited, neurodegenerative disease which usually presents itself with symptoms of hyperkinesia. However, the earliest signs of the disease are personality changes and memory loss. Fiona is a behavioural neuropharmacologist working on the development of cognitive enhancing drugs which target subtypes of GABA receptors in the hippocampus in order to treat the impaired cognitive abilities that occur in Huntington’s disease.