All Articles by Emily Haines, MSc, PhD student
Emily Haines, MSc, is an expert on the cellular aspects of neuroimmunology and neurodegeneration. She holds a MSc in neuroscience from University College London. She is currently PhD candidate at Charite Medical University in Berlin and has worked as a biotechnology financial analyst researching and writing investment reports on companies developing and commercialising new therapies.
The Many Emerging Roles of Astrocytes
Astrocytes, the star-shaped glial cells in the brain, were long believed to play only supportive roles to the electrically active neurons involved in information processing in the brain. The past few decades, however, have seen an explosion of interest in and research on these cells. Scientists have unearthed an increasing number of functions for astrocytes in neural signalling. It has become clear that astrocytes were grossly underestimated in their size, capabilities, and complexity. Given this, is it possible that astrocytes not only support neural signalling, but themselves play a distinct and active role in the information processing of the brain?
The Brain’s Border Patrol – Blood Brain Barrier
The blood brain barrier (BBB) forms a tight security gateway between blood vessels and brain tissue. Blood flow throughout the brain is crucial to deliver the oxygen and nutrients required for the brain to function properly. Even though the brain comprises only about 2% of body mass, it is responsible for nearly a quarter of the body's oxygen consumption. Blood flow is so crucial to the brain that when blood flow stops, brain functions halt within seconds. At the same time the brain also requires a very specific environment in order to function properly. Miniscule changes in pH, chemical concentrations, and protein composition around brain cells can have drastic and detrimental effects to cellular signaling and thus, brain function. The BBB acts as the border control to the brain, selectively allowing the necessary molecules to pass through while denying entry to everything else flowing through the blood vessels.
Mighty Microglia – The Brain’s Immune Cells Key to Treating Brain Diseases
Microglia, the immune cells of the brain, were long thought to be rather boring cells that existed in only two states -- resting and activated. It was long believed that in the healthy brain microglia lay waiting doing nothing until serious damage was detected. If the brain was infected or damaged, microglia were thought to respond similarly to the immune cells in the rest of the body -- swelling, fighting invading micro-organisms, then returning to a resting state and doing nothing further. However, over the past few years, increasingly sophisticated experiments have demonstrated that these cells are capable of a wide range of unexpected activities and responses. As a result, these previously ignored cells are turning out to be promising targets for new drugs to treat a wide range of neurodegenerative disorders.
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