by Aiho Ding, Ph.D.
This animal study will explore whether an "adaptive" protein called "MyD88-5" is a possible link between the brain and the immune system. The study will examine the role of MyD88-5 in signaling cells to mount an inflammatory response against invading...
Read more >
by Jens Husemann, M.D.
Columbia University researchers have identified a part of the amyloid protein, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, that may be a target for attack by immune system antibodies. Now the investigators will undertake tests in mice to see whether anti-amyl...
Read more >
by Carl Nathan, M.D.
These collaborators will determine whether drugs that target a specific enzyme, which has been implicated in damage to brain cells in Alzheimer's disease, confer protection in a mouse model. If so, the findings could lead to human clinical drug trial...
Read more >
by Scott Zamvil, M.D., Ph.D.
This study will determine whether immune B cells play two roles in the development of multiple sclerosis (MS). Additionally, the investigators will examine the consequences of reducing B cells as a therapy for MS.MS is an autoimmune disease of the br...
Read more >
by David Irani, M.D.
These investigators will study a mouse model to determine whether immune microglial cells, which reside in the brain and spinal cord, produce inflammatory signals in response to a virus that ultimately leads to the death of motor neurons controlling ...
Read more >
by Dorian McGavern, Ph.D.
The researchers will use a mouse model of a viral brain infection to determine how immune "memory" T cells can successfully clear the virus from infected brain cells, without harming the brain cells themselves. If researchers can define the minimum i...
Read more >
by Richard Ransohoff, M.D.
Researchers will learn how brain cells signal resident inflammatory microglial cells to modify their attack, so that the inflammatory reaction does not inadvertently damage brain cells. The findings could provide a better understanding of how inflamm...
Read more >
by Carla J. Shatz, Ph.D.
Harvard University researchers’ recent studies of how brain cells form visual system connections revealed an unexpected finding: a family of immune system molecules appears to play a critical role in directing the process. The molecule family is cal...
Read more >
by Yong-Rui Zou, Ph.D.
The Columbia researchers will investigate in animals how a specific receptor, which resides on the surface of both immune and nerve cells, signals normally during cell development and how it malfunctions and leads to abnormal cell development.The rec...
Read more >
by Gunnar K. Gouras
Prior research has indicated that patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have lower levels of anti-AB antibodies in their blood and cerebrospinal fluid compared to healthy adults. The researchers hypothesize that lower levels of these antibodies inf...
Read more >
by Ignacio Romero, Ph.D.
The investigators will undertake molecular studies of how brain inflammation may weaken the normally impermeable blood-brain barrier in conditions as diverse as autoimmune multiple sclerosis and HIV-related dementia. The findings may lead to more ef...
Read more >
by Annamaria Vezzani, Ph.D.
This study, in laboratory animal brain tissue, will lay the groundwork for determining whether the degree of inflammation resulting from an initial neonatal seizure determines whether new blood vessels with a weakened blood-brain-barrier (BBB) functi...
Read more >
by Robyn S. Klein, M.D., Ph.D.
This animal and human research study will explore the possibility that specific molecular interactions direct immune lymphocytes to the blood-brain-barrier (BBB) and minimize brain tissue inflammation in multiple sclerosis (MS) and its animal counter...
Read more >
by Fabienne Mackay, Ph.D.
A hormone secreted during psychological stress that interferes with immune defenses has recently been found. Researchers will examine in mice how this relationship works at a molecular level and explore whether it may play a role in autoimmune disea...
Read more >
by Christian Münz, Ph.D.
Researchers will determine whether faulty immune “natural killer” (NK) cells sustain the central nervous system (CNS) destruction that occurs in people with autoimmune multiple sclerosis (MS). If so, findings may lead to development of new MS therap...
Read more >
by Manuel Comabella, M.D.
This study will explore the role of a genetic factor in determining whether or not multiple sclerosis (MS) patients respond to current immune-based therapies. In autoimmune MS, the body’s immune cells mistakenly attack the “myelin” sheath. This shea...
Read more >
by Bryan C. Hains, Ph.D.
Investigators will explore, at the molecular level, how immune microglial cells in the spinal cord interact with nerve cells to perpetuate chronic pain following spinal cord injury. The study may accelerate initiation of clinical trials of an experi...
Read more >
by Joseph El Khoury, M.D.
This study in “transgenic” mice (having some human cells) will explore how immune microglial cells are recruited to the brain in Alzheimer’s disease. It also will explore whether initially protective microglial cells then become destructive in the d...
Read more >
by Sandra Amor, Ph.D.
Researchers will characterize a new animal model they are developing of the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis (MS), to determine whether immune system attacks on a specific protein in nerve cell bodies and their communication cables (axons) are a...
Read more >
by Richard Miller, Ph.D.
Investigators will examine whether proteins called “chemokines” can direct certain stem cells in the brain to sites where myelin, the sheath surrounding nerve cell axons in the brain and spinal cord, has been damaged in the autoimmune disease multipl...
Read more >
by Harald Neumann, M.D.
Investigators will study a “humanized” mouse model to determine whether a specific receptor on immune microglial cells in the brain blocks inflammatory responses, and whether malfunction of this receptor enables the inflammation that occurs in degene...
Read more >
by Monica Carson, Ph.D.
Researchers will determine whether a specific molecule governs immune T cells’ “intolerance” to the body’s own tissues (as occurs in autoimmune diseases) and, conversely, “tolerance” to brain tumors that invade and take over brain cells. Ironically...
Read more >
by Changiz Geula, Ph.D. and Joseph El Khoury, M.D.
This study will determine the effects of age-related changes in human immune miocroglial cells in contributing to brain degeneration in Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by the build-up of amyloid (a protein) in spaces betwee...
Read more >
by Thomas Misgeld, M.D., and Martin Kerschensteiner, M.D.
The aim of this study is to better understand how the nervous system is damaged in multiple sclerosis. This will be achieved by combining in vivo imaging and electron microscopy to identify early "signatures," i.e., the first subcellular changes that...
Read more >
by Glaucia Furtado, Ph.D., and Sergio Lira, Ph.D.
Researchers will work to determine whether a specific type of innate immune cell, called a monocyte, and dendritic cell (DC) are involved in initiating inflammatory disease in the brains of laboratory animals.Inflammation in the central nervous syste...
Read more >
by Wenbiao Gan, Ph.D. and Michael L. Dustin, Ph.D.
Investigators will use two-photon microscopy in laboratory animals undergoing surgical removal of a part of the skull, to determine how the surgery activates an immune inflammatory response that may result in damage to synaptic connections between br...
Read more >
by Benjamin M. Segal, M.D.
The investigators will use MRI imaging in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients to see whether they can correlate active periods of central nervous system (CNS) inflammation with specific immune inflammatory chemicals found in the patients’ bloodstream.MS...
Read more >
by Joana Palha, Ph.D. and Margarida Correia-Neves, Ph.D.
The investigators will study the role of the brain’s choroid plexus in inflammatory disorders of the central nervous system (CNS), including autoimmune multiple sclerosis (MS). The choroid plexus is a single layer of cells that forms a protective li...
Read more >
by Edward J. Collins, Ph.D.
The researchers will develop a technique for identifying melanoma cells that have metastasized to the brain and for studying the effects of immunotherapies designed to strengthen immune T cell responses to the melanoma cells.Melanoma is a highly mali...
Read more >
by Caius G. Radu, M.D.
This research will adapt techniques used to study how immune cells are activated against melanoma, a deadly cancer that quickly metastasizes to the brain, to the study of autoimmune brain disease, in which immune cells mistakenly target the brain. Th...
Read more >
by David A. Harris, M.D., Ph.D.
Investigators will study animal models to learn how deadly prions—misfolded proteins that are infectious in animals and humans—travel from immune sites in the body to the brain.Prions aggregate and produce deadly infections in the brain. They are re...
Read more >
by Devanand Sarkar, M.B.B.S., Ph.D.
Researchers will test in laboratory cultures and animals a new brain glioma treatment that combines gene therapy and immunotherapy. They will assess the ability of this treatment to destroy human and mouse glioma cells and determine whether this trea...
Read more >
by Iannis Aifantis, Ph.D.
Investigators will undertake laboratory studies to determine the molecular processes that lead cancerous white blood cells to infiltrate the brain in the disease called T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), in an effort to prevent the severe c...
Read more >
by Stephen Gottschalk, M.D.
Investigators have developed a line of genetically modified T cells that specifically target and destroy human glioma tumors transplanted into the brains of mice. They now seek to improve the long-term efficacy of this treatment by further modifying...
Read more >
by Spyros Kalams, M.D.
Researchers will examine how chronic viral infection of the brain affects the ability of immune T cells to control the infection and protect against neurological dysfunction, and then will attempt to determine whether anti-viral therapy restores immu...
Read more >
by Clare Baecher-Allan, Ph.D.
Dr. Baecher-Allan’s research will explore how deadly brain tumor cells interact with the subsets of immune cells that regulate immune responses and suppress tumor-attacking immune T cells. Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) tumors are deadly malignant b...
Read more >
by Michael D. Robek, Ph.D.
Using human tissue cultures in the laboratory, investigators will explore whether a newly identified immune protein, called “interleukin-29” (IL-29), can protect human brain cells from viral infections, and can also slow the growth of deadly brain tu...
Read more >
by Alejandro Aballay, Ph.D.
The investigators will examine, at the molecular level in a worm model, how the nervous system regulates immune responses to infections to prevent either insufficient or excessive immune activation.The body’s innate immune system, its first line of d...
Read more >
by Costas G. Hadjipanayis, M.D., Ph.D.
A newly developed technique that can both image deadly brain glioma cells and also potentially kill those cells will be tested in a mouse model of glioblastoma. Deadly brain glioblastoma remains resistant to treatment. A potential therapeutic target...
Read more >
by Laurence J.N. Cooper, M.D., Ph.D.
Researchers will evaluate whether a new immune-based therapy for an incurable brain tumor that primarily occurs in children can be developed and effectively used in an animal model that resembles human cancers.A lethal brain tumor, diffuse interstiti...
Read more >
by Ana Rodriguez, Ph.D.
Researchers will study how overwhelming brain inflammation develops in some patients with malaria and results in disabling and potentially deadly cerebral malaria.More than 500 million people worldwide suffer from malaria infection, produced by the P...
Read more >
by Akiva Mintz M.D., Ph.D.
The research goal is to activate the immune system to precisely target malignant brain glioma cells while simultaneously delivering radiation to the infiltrating tumor without harming adjacent normal brain cells.
The malignant cells of high grade gl...
Read more >
by Adeline Vanderver, M.D.
Using a rare inherited developmental brain disease as a model, investigators will undertake tissue culture studies to determine how mutations in several genes involved in innate cellular immunity produce loss of myelin, the fatty sheath covering nerv...
Read more >
by Eric T. Ahrens, Ph.D.
Investigators will develop two imaging tools for assessing the effectiveness of various experimental T cell immunotherapies being developed in mouse models as potential treatments for human brain gliomas.Given the lack of results and serious side eff...
Read more >
by Kavita M. Dhodapkar, M.D.
Investigators will attempt to strengthen the ability of innate immune cells to catalyze an attack against deadly human brain tumors.Glioma brain tumors are rapidly lethal, causing death with a year or two. They are not currently treatable. Recent evi...
Read more >
by Kang Liu, Ph.D.
This study will help define the multiple roles of immune dendritic cells in shaping the central nervous system’s (CNS) immune responses to infections, and also in maintaining CNS health.Dendritic cells are innate immune cells, the body’s first line o...
Read more >
by Eric Lancaster, M.D., Ph.D.
Investigators will take antibodies from patients with an autoimmune form of limbic encephalitis and seizures, to explore how immune system antibodies produce this brain disease and how the disease can be treated in patients.Some forms of encephalitis...
Read more >
by Mark Souweidane, M.D.
Through this study, investigators will determine whether a PET imaging tracer can both deliver an experimental therapy directly to a deadly type of brain stem tumor in children, and also can accurately measure the dose that has effectively entered th...
Read more >
by Silva Markovic-Plese, M.D.
Researchers will characterize initial steps in the development of autoimmunity in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and identify potential targets for early treatment.MS is an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system (CNS, comprising th...
Read more >
by Aiho Ding, Ph.D.
This animal study will explore whether an "adaptive" protein called "MyD88-5" is a possible link between the brain and the immune system. The study will examine the role of MyD88-5 in signaling cells to mount an inflammatory response against invading...
Read more >
by Jens Husemann, M.D.
Columbia University researchers have identified a part of the amyloid protein, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, that may be a target for attack by immune system antibodies. Now the investigators will undertake tests in mice to see whether anti-amyl...
Read more >
by Carl Nathan, M.D.
These collaborators will determine whether drugs that target a specific enzyme, which has been implicated in damage to brain cells in Alzheimer's disease, confer protection in a mouse model. If so, the findings could lead to human clinical drug trial...
Read more >
by Scott Zamvil, M.D., Ph.D.
This study will determine whether immune B cells play two roles in the development of multiple sclerosis (MS). Additionally, the investigators will examine the consequences of reducing B cells as a therapy for MS.MS is an autoimmune disease of the br...
Read more >
by David Irani, M.D.
These investigators will study a mouse model to determine whether immune microglial cells, which reside in the brain and spinal cord, produce inflammatory signals in response to a virus that ultimately leads to the death of motor neurons controlling ...
Read more >
by Dorian McGavern, Ph.D.
The researchers will use a mouse model of a viral brain infection to determine how immune "memory" T cells can successfully clear the virus from infected brain cells, without harming the brain cells themselves. If researchers can define the minimum i...
Read more >
by Richard Ransohoff, M.D.
Researchers will learn how brain cells signal resident inflammatory microglial cells to modify their attack, so that the inflammatory reaction does not inadvertently damage brain cells. The findings could provide a better understanding of how inflamm...
Read more >
by Carla J. Shatz, Ph.D.
Harvard University researchers’ recent studies of how brain cells form visual system connections revealed an unexpected finding: a family of immune system molecules appears to play a critical role in directing the process. The molecule family is cal...
Read more >
by Yong-Rui Zou, Ph.D.
The Columbia researchers will investigate in animals how a specific receptor, which resides on the surface of both immune and nerve cells, signals normally during cell development and how it malfunctions and leads to abnormal cell development.The rec...
Read more >
by Gunnar K. Gouras
Prior research has indicated that patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have lower levels of anti-AB antibodies in their blood and cerebrospinal fluid compared to healthy adults. The researchers hypothesize that lower levels of these antibodies inf...
Read more >
by Ignacio Romero, Ph.D.
The investigators will undertake molecular studies of how brain inflammation may weaken the normally impermeable blood-brain barrier in conditions as diverse as autoimmune multiple sclerosis and HIV-related dementia. The findings may lead to more ef...
Read more >
by Annamaria Vezzani, Ph.D.
This study, in laboratory animal brain tissue, will lay the groundwork for determining whether the degree of inflammation resulting from an initial neonatal seizure determines whether new blood vessels with a weakened blood-brain-barrier (BBB) functi...
Read more >
by Robyn S. Klein, M.D., Ph.D.
This animal and human research study will explore the possibility that specific molecular interactions direct immune lymphocytes to the blood-brain-barrier (BBB) and minimize brain tissue inflammation in multiple sclerosis (MS) and its animal counter...
Read more >
by Fabienne Mackay, Ph.D.
A hormone secreted during psychological stress that interferes with immune defenses has recently been found. Researchers will examine in mice how this relationship works at a molecular level and explore whether it may play a role in autoimmune disea...
Read more >
by Christian Münz, Ph.D.
Researchers will determine whether faulty immune “natural killer” (NK) cells sustain the central nervous system (CNS) destruction that occurs in people with autoimmune multiple sclerosis (MS). If so, findings may lead to development of new MS therap...
Read more >
by Manuel Comabella, M.D.
This study will explore the role of a genetic factor in determining whether or not multiple sclerosis (MS) patients respond to current immune-based therapies. In autoimmune MS, the body’s immune cells mistakenly attack the “myelin” sheath. This shea...
Read more >
by Bryan C. Hains, Ph.D.
Investigators will explore, at the molecular level, how immune microglial cells in the spinal cord interact with nerve cells to perpetuate chronic pain following spinal cord injury. The study may accelerate initiation of clinical trials of an experi...
Read more >
by Joseph El Khoury, M.D.
This study in “transgenic” mice (having some human cells) will explore how immune microglial cells are recruited to the brain in Alzheimer’s disease. It also will explore whether initially protective microglial cells then become destructive in the d...
Read more >
by Sandra Amor, Ph.D.
Researchers will characterize a new animal model they are developing of the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis (MS), to determine whether immune system attacks on a specific protein in nerve cell bodies and their communication cables (axons) are a...
Read more >
by Richard Miller, Ph.D.
Investigators will examine whether proteins called “chemokines” can direct certain stem cells in the brain to sites where myelin, the sheath surrounding nerve cell axons in the brain and spinal cord, has been damaged in the autoimmune disease multipl...
Read more >
by Harald Neumann, M.D.
Investigators will study a “humanized” mouse model to determine whether a specific receptor on immune microglial cells in the brain blocks inflammatory responses, and whether malfunction of this receptor enables the inflammation that occurs in degene...
Read more >
by Monica Carson, Ph.D.
Researchers will determine whether a specific molecule governs immune T cells’ “intolerance” to the body’s own tissues (as occurs in autoimmune diseases) and, conversely, “tolerance” to brain tumors that invade and take over brain cells. Ironically...
Read more >
by Changiz Geula, Ph.D. and Joseph El Khoury, M.D.
This study will determine the effects of age-related changes in human immune miocroglial cells in contributing to brain degeneration in Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by the build-up of amyloid (a protein) in spaces betwee...
Read more >
by Thomas Misgeld, M.D., and Martin Kerschensteiner, M.D.
The aim of this study is to better understand how the nervous system is damaged in multiple sclerosis. This will be achieved by combining in vivo imaging and electron microscopy to identify early "signatures," i.e., the first subcellular changes that...
Read more >
by Glaucia Furtado, Ph.D., and Sergio Lira, Ph.D.
Researchers will work to determine whether a specific type of innate immune cell, called a monocyte, and dendritic cell (DC) are involved in initiating inflammatory disease in the brains of laboratory animals.Inflammation in the central nervous syste...
Read more >
by Wenbiao Gan, Ph.D. and Michael L. Dustin, Ph.D.
Investigators will use two-photon microscopy in laboratory animals undergoing surgical removal of a part of the skull, to determine how the surgery activates an immune inflammatory response that may result in damage to synaptic connections between br...
Read more >
by Benjamin M. Segal, M.D.
The investigators will use MRI imaging in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients to see whether they can correlate active periods of central nervous system (CNS) inflammation with specific immune inflammatory chemicals found in the patients’ bloodstream.MS...
Read more >
by Joana Palha, Ph.D. and Margarida Correia-Neves, Ph.D.
The investigators will study the role of the brain’s choroid plexus in inflammatory disorders of the central nervous system (CNS), including autoimmune multiple sclerosis (MS). The choroid plexus is a single layer of cells that forms a protective li...
Read more >
by Edward J. Collins, Ph.D.
The researchers will develop a technique for identifying melanoma cells that have metastasized to the brain and for studying the effects of immunotherapies designed to strengthen immune T cell responses to the melanoma cells.Melanoma is a highly mali...
Read more >
by Caius G. Radu, M.D.
This research will adapt techniques used to study how immune cells are activated against melanoma, a deadly cancer that quickly metastasizes to the brain, to the study of autoimmune brain disease, in which immune cells mistakenly target the brain. Th...
Read more >
by David A. Harris, M.D., Ph.D.
Investigators will study animal models to learn how deadly prions—misfolded proteins that are infectious in animals and humans—travel from immune sites in the body to the brain.Prions aggregate and produce deadly infections in the brain. They are re...
Read more >
by Devanand Sarkar, M.B.B.S., Ph.D.
Researchers will test in laboratory cultures and animals a new brain glioma treatment that combines gene therapy and immunotherapy. They will assess the ability of this treatment to destroy human and mouse glioma cells and determine whether this trea...
Read more >
by Iannis Aifantis, Ph.D.
Investigators will undertake laboratory studies to determine the molecular processes that lead cancerous white blood cells to infiltrate the brain in the disease called T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), in an effort to prevent the severe c...
Read more >
by Stephen Gottschalk, M.D.
Investigators have developed a line of genetically modified T cells that specifically target and destroy human glioma tumors transplanted into the brains of mice. They now seek to improve the long-term efficacy of this treatment by further modifying...
Read more >
by Spyros Kalams, M.D.
Researchers will examine how chronic viral infection of the brain affects the ability of immune T cells to control the infection and protect against neurological dysfunction, and then will attempt to determine whether anti-viral therapy restores immu...
Read more >
by Clare Baecher-Allan, Ph.D.
Dr. Baecher-Allan’s research will explore how deadly brain tumor cells interact with the subsets of immune cells that regulate immune responses and suppress tumor-attacking immune T cells. Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) tumors are deadly malignant b...
Read more >
by Michael D. Robek, Ph.D.
Using human tissue cultures in the laboratory, investigators will explore whether a newly identified immune protein, called “interleukin-29” (IL-29), can protect human brain cells from viral infections, and can also slow the growth of deadly brain tu...
Read more >
by Alejandro Aballay, Ph.D.
The investigators will examine, at the molecular level in a worm model, how the nervous system regulates immune responses to infections to prevent either insufficient or excessive immune activation.The body’s innate immune system, its first line of d...
Read more >
by Costas G. Hadjipanayis, M.D., Ph.D.
A newly developed technique that can both image deadly brain glioma cells and also potentially kill those cells will be tested in a mouse model of glioblastoma. Deadly brain glioblastoma remains resistant to treatment. A potential therapeutic target...
Read more >
by Laurence J.N. Cooper, M.D., Ph.D.
Researchers will evaluate whether a new immune-based therapy for an incurable brain tumor that primarily occurs in children can be developed and effectively used in an animal model that resembles human cancers.A lethal brain tumor, diffuse interstiti...
Read more >
by Ana Rodriguez, Ph.D.
Researchers will study how overwhelming brain inflammation develops in some patients with malaria and results in disabling and potentially deadly cerebral malaria.More than 500 million people worldwide suffer from malaria infection, produced by the P...
Read more >
by Akiva Mintz M.D., Ph.D.
The research goal is to activate the immune system to precisely target malignant brain glioma cells while simultaneously delivering radiation to the infiltrating tumor without harming adjacent normal brain cells.
The malignant cells of high grade gl...
Read more >
by Adeline Vanderver, M.D.
Using a rare inherited developmental brain disease as a model, investigators will undertake tissue culture studies to determine how mutations in several genes involved in innate cellular immunity produce loss of myelin, the fatty sheath covering nerv...
Read more >
by Eric T. Ahrens, Ph.D.
Investigators will develop two imaging tools for assessing the effectiveness of various experimental T cell immunotherapies being developed in mouse models as potential treatments for human brain gliomas.Given the lack of results and serious side eff...
Read more >
by Kavita M. Dhodapkar, M.D.
Investigators will attempt to strengthen the ability of innate immune cells to catalyze an attack against deadly human brain tumors.Glioma brain tumors are rapidly lethal, causing death with a year or two. They are not currently treatable. Recent evi...
Read more >
by Kang Liu, Ph.D.
This study will help define the multiple roles of immune dendritic cells in shaping the central nervous system’s (CNS) immune responses to infections, and also in maintaining CNS health.Dendritic cells are innate immune cells, the body’s first line o...
Read more >
by Eric Lancaster, M.D., Ph.D.
Investigators will take antibodies from patients with an autoimmune form of limbic encephalitis and seizures, to explore how immune system antibodies produce this brain disease and how the disease can be treated in patients.Some forms of encephalitis...
Read more >
by Mark Souweidane, M.D.
Through this study, investigators will determine whether a PET imaging tracer can both deliver an experimental therapy directly to a deadly type of brain stem tumor in children, and also can accurately measure the dose that has effectively entered th...
Read more >
by Silva Markovic-Plese, M.D.
Researchers will characterize initial steps in the development of autoimmunity in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and identify potential targets for early treatment.MS is an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system (CNS, comprising th...
Read more >