Lectures and seminars StratNeuro Seminar with Michal Schwartz

"Two decades ago my team discovered that the brain is tightly dependent on innate and adaptive immune cells for its maintenance and repair. Deep understanding of these relationships led to the discoveries that the brain's borders, including the blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier and the meninges, provide niches for blood-borne immune cells, from which they remotely affect the brain, and provide a gateway for leukocyte entry to the brain, upon need. We suggested that these immune cells, along with neurons and non-neuronal cells within the brain parenchyma, create an ecosystem that enhances the brain's resilience to continuous and diverse perturbations. We demonstrated that impairment of brain-immune crosstalk affects onset and severity of brain diseases. Thus, while immune dysfunction is not the primary cause of the disease, it could promote the transition to symptom onset. We therefore proposed that activating the immune system might help restore immunity to mitigate neurodegenerative diseases. Among the different approaches to boost the systemic immune system, we found that transiently blocking the inhibitory PD-1/PD-L1 immune checkpoint pathway, initiates an immune response in the periphery that leads to disease modification within the brain in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease and tauopathy. The beneficial effect was found to be on multiple disease-associated pathologies within the brain. Moreover, it was shown to dependent on recruitment of blood-borne macrophages and FoxP3 regulatory T cells to the brain. Overall, targeting the immune system opens new avenues for understanding and treating neurodegenerative diseases. This approach is currently being evaluated in a clinical trial involving AD patients, utilizing a novel anti-PD-L1 therapy specifically tailored for AD, based on its mechanism of action. "

Hosted Christian Göritz , CMB, KI

Lunch will be provided after the talk.