Innate-PD

In an ongoing effort to better understand the involvement of the immune system in Parkinson’s disease, we are investigating how different types of immune cells are involved at different stages of the disease. This study is specifically profiling cells which form part of the innate immune system including natural killer (NK) cells, monocytes and neutrophils. The main role of the innate immune system is to defend us from infections and injury, but in Parkinson’s disease it may have a detrimental role by driving excessive brain inflammation. Innate immune activation in PD may be triggered by alpha-synuclein aggregation or micro-organisms in peripheral sites including the gut, nose and salivary glands. We are studying this by characterising innate immune cells in blood, nasal swab samples and saliva samples from people at different stages of PD as well as healthy controls. We are also examining post-mortem brain tissue to look at the infiltration of innate immune cells into the brain and exploring how this is linked to Parkinson’s pathology. We hope that this work will ultimately inform development of new immune-based biomarkers and identify new treatment targets for PD.  

Post-mortem brain tissue from the substantia nigra of a PD case with fluorescent markers to detect NK cells.