Is the brain immune?

Stephanie Hughes, PhD, and Sarah Parker, Department Biochemistry, are investigating the brain's ability to fight infection.

The ability of the brain to respond to immune invasion is essential to maintaining health, and inappropriate responses are a major factor in neurodegenerative disease.

 In addition, infection during pregnancy can result in conditions such as cerebral palsy and increased risk of multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia.

The main response to brain infection is mediated by an immune-like cells known as microglia.

However, cells required for development of the brain, neural progenitor cells, also respond to immune stimulation, and this response can adversely affect development.

Our lab studies a protein that is required for brain development and for immune system function.

This study will determine how this protein responds to infection and whether it is regulated in the same way in neural progenitor cells as it is in the immune system.

This may provide new clues to how infections during pregnancy impact on brain development and disease.

This study is supported by a grant from the Otago Medical Research Foundation.

• Dr Stephanie Hughes is the head of the Neural Development and Disease Lab (formed in March 2008), Department of Biochemistry. 

Sarah Parker, who is working on this project, is currently completing her first year of a Master's degree.

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