The Microglia and Macrophages Programme

Towards an in vivo functional dissection of the role of microglia and macrophages in Alzheimer’s disease aetiology.

Novel genetic findings from the International Genomics of Alzheimer Project consortium, of which we are a leading member, implicate genes and pathways not previously known to be associated with dementia. This has firmly established genes of the immune system in dementia aetiology and indicates microglial/macrophage are important in the development.

The identification of specific DNA variants, particularly coding variants, in Alzheimer’s Disease provides an opportunity to dissect immune mechanisms underlying disease but the findings are almost completely unexploited.

The University is an excellent position to pursue the mechanism by which these novelgenetic findings lead to Alzheimer’s Disease susceptibility due to its combined expertise in Immunology and the genetics of Alzheimer’s Disease. Notably the same immune network is implicated in Huntington’s and Parkinson’s diseases, suggesting that these diseases have parallel immune pathway pathology and might benefit from similar treatments.

The objective of this programme of work is to establish a functional pipeline for the study of disease associated genes and polymorphism in microglia and macrophages in the context of dementia related disease in vivo.