2011 Award Recipients — William W. Schlaepfer, MD and Leroy R. Sharer, MD

Abstract

FIGURE. No caption available. William W. Schlaepfer, MD, trained in pathology and neuropathology at the Yale Medical School where he conducted a doctoral thesis on Alzheimer Type 2 astrocytes during experimental ammonium intoxication in rats under the tutelage of Elias E. Manuelidis. He completed his training at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Psychiatrie in Munich, Germany, a Mecca for classic neuropathology. While in Munich, he became interested in the ultrastructure of peripheral nerve and the nature of the axonal cytoskeleton. He continued his experimental studies on peripheral nerve as staff neuropathologist at Cornell and Washington University medical schools where he introduced teased fiber analyses of nerve biopsies for differentiating demyelinating and axonal neuropathies and for semiquantitative assessment of Wallerian degeneration. Key insight into the nature of Wallerian degeneration derived from observations that the granular disintegration of axonal cytoskeleton was simulated when frozen sections of rat peripheral nerve were placed in Ringer's solution but not in isotonic saline. These observations led to a collaborative study with Richard Bunge in the Anatomy Department of Washington University showing that transected neurites of cultured dorsal root ganglia do not undergo Wallerian degeneration when calcium ions are removed from the media. Subsequent studies showed that granular disintegration of axonal cytoskeleton and fragmentation of myelin on teased fiber preparation could be prevented in transected and excised nerve when bathed in media lacking calcium ions. In pursuit of the calcium story, Dr Schlaepfer used a Research Career Development Award to spend a year in the laboratory of Peter Baker in Cambridge, England. The neurophysiology laboratories at Cambridge were world-renowned for Nobel laureate personages and their landmark discoveries of ion movements during nerve conduction in the giant axons of squid. Peter Baker was their leading authority on the movements of calcium. Dr Schlaepfer was, indeed, a small fish in a very …