Hannah Scheiblich starts her research group
Research into the immune system of the ageing brain
The Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing has a new research group: Hannah Scheiblich started researching the immune system of the ageing brain at the beginning of February. Her group will be investigating microglia, the brain's immune cells, in the ageing brain and their role in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.
Microglia are the brain's health police. They protect the nerve cells from pathogens and break down dead cells. With increasing age, however, microglia change and can become inflammatory. This can lead to the death of nerve cells and to the development or progression of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.
In neurodegenerative diseases, proteins in the brain become clumped together. Microglial cells take up these harmful proteins, but can trigger inflammatory reactions if they are unable to break them down. During her postdoc, Scheiblich discovered that microglia try to help each other in such situations. They distribute the harmful proteins to each other via small channels known as nanotubes. "It's like having a basket full of rotten apples. If I ate them all by myself, I could die. But if I asked all my friends to eat one of these rotten apples each, then everyone would only feel bad for a short time," explains Scheiblich.
In future, Scheiblich wants to investigate whether communication via the nanotubes also takes place between microglia and nerve cells and whether the microglia can protect the nerve cells in this way. She also wants to gain a better understanding of why the function of microglia can be impaired in old age.
"The Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing is the perfect place for my research. The many research groups on campus, which work at the highest scientific level, open up completely new opportunities for collaboration. I'm really looking forward to exchanging ideas with my new colleagues!" says Scheiblich.
About Hannah Scheiblich
Hannah Scheiblich studied at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover from 2009 to 2011 and obtained her doctorate there in 2015. She then went to the Medical Research Council (MRC) at the University of Leicester, England, as a postdoc before moving to the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bonn in 2016. After almost a year as a junior research group leader at the University of Bonn, she started her Max Planck Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing at the beginning of February.
