Mary Bartlett Bunge, 92, deceased; Pioneer in the treatment of spinal cord injury

Mary Bartlett Bunge, who with her husband Richard studied how the body responds to spinal cord injuries and continued their work after his death in 1996, eventually discovering a promising treatment to restore freedom of movement to millions of paralyzed patients, died at 17 February. at her home in Coral Gables, Florida. She was 92.

The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, a non-profit research organization to which Dr. Bunge (pronounced BUN-ghee) was affiliated, announced the death.

“She was absolutely the top woman in neuroscience, not just in the United States but in the world,” said Dr. Barth Green, co-founder and dean of the Miami Project, in a telephone interview.

Dr. For much of her career, Bunge’s focus has been on myelin, a mix of proteins and fatty acids that coat nerve fibers, protecting them and increasing the speed at which they conduct signals.

Early in her career, she and her husband, whom she met as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin in the 1950s, used new electron microscopes to describe the way myelin developed around nerve fibers and how, after injury or disease, it retreated, in a process called demyelination.

Treating spinal cord injuries is one of the most frustrating aspects of medical research. Every year, thousands of people become completely or partially paralyzed after car accidents, falls, sports injuries and gun violence. Unlike other parts of the body, the spinal cord is stubbornly difficult to rehabilitate.

Through their research, the Bunges concluded that demyelination was one of the reasons spinal cord injuries are so difficult for the body to repair – an insight that in turn opened doors to the possibility of reversing it through treatments.

The couple worked closely together and always at the same institution. They both graduated from Wisconsin in 1960; she earned a Ph.D. in zoology and cytology he obtained an MD. They went on to postdoctoral work at Columbia University and professorships at Washington University in St. Louis before joining the Miami Project, affiliated with the University of Miami.

Over the decades, the couple concluded that myelin could be stimulated to regrow if the affected area was covered with transplanted Schwann cells, which typically surround axons in the nervous system and specialize in producing the proteins. They found promising potential in experiments that placed transplanted human Schwann cells in rats.

“It was an intense and exciting time, coming home between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. and getting up a few hours later to resume our work,” she wrote in a personal sketch for the fourth volume of “The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography” ( 2004). “The electron microscopic images were not only revealing, but also responded to my artistic inclination as expected; I loved taking the most beautiful microphotographs possible.”

The two divided their work: Mary concentrated on basic research, Richard on its possible applications. After his death, Mary continued to work on the implications of their work for spinal cord therapy.

Dr. Mary Bunge realized that simply transplanting Schwann cells was not enough; medications and other interventions were necessary to promote regeneration. In 2003, she and her research team announced that after using a combination of drugs and transplanted cells, rats regained 70 percent of their previous mobility after just twelve weeks.

Mary Elizabeth Bartlett was born on April 3, 1931 in New Haven, Conn. Her parents, George and Margaret (Reynolds) Bartlett, renovated houses. Her mother was also a painter and a descendant of the British portraitist Joshua Reynolds – a legacy that Mary took to heart early on, convinced that she would become an artist herself.

Her summers exploring the woods and streams of rural Connecticut convinced her to pursue a career in science instead. She attended Simmons College in Boston, where she studied to become a laboratory technician and graduated in 1953 with a degree in biology.

She turned out to be a phenomenal student, and in her senior year she received an offer to join a research laboratory as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin Medical School.

She met Richard Bunge early in her graduate career, and the two quickly found both professional and romantic partners. They married in 1956.

Dr. Bunge is survived by her sons, Jonathan and Peter, and a grandson.

The Bunges moved to Miami in 1989 at the invitation of the Miami Project, founded by Dr. Green, a neurosurgeon, and Nick Buoniconti, a Hall of Fame linebacker whose son was paralyzed during a college football game.

Richard Bunge was appointed scientific director of the project, and both he and his wife were given professorships at the University of Miami.

Her work in cellular transplantation revolutionized the field of spinal cord treatment, Dr. Barth said.

“She got the ball rolling, and now everyone around the world is doing cell transplants,” said Dr. Barth, adding that Dr. Bunge remained active in research and at conferences until her retirement in 2018, at the age of 86. “There’s no doubt that people stopped breathing when she walked into a room because they were so impressed with what she was capable of.