Close to the Heart: Jackson Scientist Studies Disease That Took Her Mother's Life
Although a year has passed since Cat Lutz buried her mother, recalling the ordeal of Joanne Lutz’s slow death still brings tears.
Cat’s doctorate in biochemistry and her ongoing research at The Jackson Laboratory into fatal neuro-degenerative diseases made her the first in her family
to realize that her mother’s rapid cascade of disabilities were indicators of ALS, the clinical shorthand for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
“My mother was 65 and doing well, having just retired from being a legal secretary,” said Cat, who has worked in genetic resources for four years and is now the associate director of The Jackson Laboratory’s mouse mutant repository. “I remember calling her one day at about 2 in the afternoon, and her speech was slurred. She and my father had a drink now and then, but never in the middle the day. I asked my father if she was drinking.”
That was in the fall of 2005. By the next summer, Joanne Lutz could barely speak and was undergoing testing for her progressive loss of mobility. Spinal taps and muscle function evaluations ruled out other, more benign causes.
“She got a second opinion, but, at least to me, the symptoms were so obvious,” Cat recalls. “By the time they made the ALS diagnosis, she couldn’t speak and she could hardly walk. The next year was incredibly awful. It was very hard on my father, who wouldn’t leave her side and became a prisoner in his own home. They just couldn’t face what they knew was going to happen.”
Cat’s two brothers and a sister who lived near their parents in Buffalo, N.Y., had a hard time, too, as they watched their mother succumb to the always fatal and completely untreatable breakdown of voluntary muscle function inherent in ALS. After losing the ability to swallow, Joanne Lutz was placed on a feeding tube. Within a week, she died at age 66, two years after the onset of ALS symptoms.
In the year since his wife’s death, Bob Lutz has been eager to learn about ALS, Cat said.
“He and my brothers and my sister are now participating in ALS walks,” she said. “And, since my mother’s death, my father has wanted to find out as much information as he can about ALS and the support services available to families dealing with ALS, which my parents could have benefitted from.”
Cat’s research interests focus on another always fatal, neuro-generative disease: spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA. In its most insidious form, SMA claims the lives of infants within a year of birth. SMA, like ALS, involves degeneration of motor neurons that control muscle function.
“Unlike ALS, the genetic components of SMA are so very well defined,” Cat said. “As a result, the understanding of the biology of SMA has progressed tremendously, putting treatment within reach. From a research standpoint, we’re hoping that genetic solutions we can find for SMA we also can apply to our understanding of ALS. I went into science to help people, and I feel that my work here in getting mouse models of different diseases into the hands of the researchers who need them is really having an impact.”
the day. I asked my father if she was drinking.”
