An important aspect of chronic neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's and prion disease, is the generation of an innate inflammatory response within the central nervous system (CNS).
Microglial and astroglial cells play a key role in the development and maintenance of this inflammatory response, showing enhanced proliferation and morphological activation. We are using a multidisciplinary approach combining the study of a laboratory model of chronic neurodegeneration (ME7 murine model of prion disease) with the study of clinical samples from vCJD or AD patients, to describe the time-course and regulation of microglial proliferation.
Our results demonstrate that microglial proliferation is an important feature of the evolution of chronic neurodegenerative disease, with direct implications for understanding the contribution of the CNS innate immune response to disease progression.
