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Guardians of the brain: how a special immune system protects our grey matter

The nervous and immune systems are tightly intertwined. Deciphering their chatter might help address many brain disorders and diseases.
  1. Diana Kwon

    1. Diana Kwon is a freelance science journalist based in Berlin.

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Micrograph showing close up of a mouse brain at the confluence of dural sinuses with meningeal lymphatic vessels and immune cell

The brain’s immune system includes a network of transport vessels (blue) and its own immune cells made in the bone marrow (green). Credit: Siling Du, Kipnis lab, Washington University in St. Louis

The brain is the body’s sovereign, and receives protection in keeping with its high status. Its cells are long-lived and shelter inside a fearsome fortification called the blood–brain barrier. For a long time, scientists thought that the brain was completely cut off from the chaos of the rest of the body — especially its eager defence system, a mass of immune cells that battle infections and whose actions could threaten a ruler caught in the crossfire.

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Nature 606, 22-24 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01502-8

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