Brain Discovery Could Boost Body’s Ability To Fight Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis

“If boosting SYK activity in microglia can decrease the amount of myelin debris in MS lesions, developing new drugs to target SYK could stop the progression of MS and help to reverse the damage,” Elizabeth L. Frost, a researcher on the project, said . “This is an especially promising option given that most of the currently available drugs for MS treatment dampen adaptive immunity. These immunosuppressive drugs lead to susceptibility to infection and higher risk of potentially fatal side effects like progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy. Additionally, some forms of MS do not have a strong involvement of the immune system, and therefore there are currently very limited treatment options for those patients.

“Targeting SYK in microglia,” she noted, “would circumvent multiple limitations of present-day therapeutics for MS.”

Based on their promising results, the researchers report that targeting the molecule to stimulate the brain’s immune activity could offer a way to treat not just Alzheimer’s and MS, but a “spectrum” of neurodegenerative diseases.

“These findings are especially exciting because they point to a treatment avenue in which we could alter the behavior of these native brain cells, microglia, to behave in a more neuroprotective way,” researcher Coco Holliday, a UVA undergraduate working in the Lukens lab, said. “It could potentially be applied to a variety of different neurological diseases that all share the problem of a buildup of toxic waste in the brain.

“It’s been a very exciting project to be a part of.”

Findings Published

The researchers have published their findings in the scientific journal Cell. The team consisted of Ennerfelt, Frost, Daniel A. Shapiro, Holliday, Kristine E. Zengeler, Gabrielle Voithofer, Ashley C. Bolte, Catherine R. Lammert, Joshua A. Kulas, Tyler K. Ulland and Lukens. The researchers reported no financial interests in the work.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Aging, grant RF1AG071996-01; the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, grant R01NS106383; the Alzheimer’s Association, grant ADSF-21-816651; the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund; The Owens Family Foundation; and several training grants.

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