Institutes

Immunobiology of neurological disorders

Group Leader

Cinthia Farina

The main focus of my lab is the study of the inflammatory processes associated with neurological disorders, including multiple sclerosis. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the central nervous system (CNS) characterized by the loss of the myelin sheath surrounding the axons leading to alterations of the action potential propagation. It is presumably an autoimmune disease, as MS lesions present immune cell infiltration and the animal model of disease, the experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), is induced by immunization with myelin antigens. This leads to the activation of encephalitogenic T lymphocytes that enter the CNS, attack the myelin-forming cells (the oligodendrocytes) and start an inflammatory reaction that is amplified by CNS resident cells as the astrocytes and the microglia and by infiltrating immune cells. The currently used therapeutics for MS patients are immunosuppressive and immunomodulatory drugs, indicating that peripheral processes sustain disease. Initial evidences indicate that inflammation may differ at distinct stages of MS and be involved in other neurological disorders, urging for comparative investigations of central and peripheral events among MS stages and distinct diseases.

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Research activity

My scientific activity has been and is currently driven by a translational approach. Taking the moves from clinical observations and from human samples (blood or cerebral tissue), my research explores the activity of immune/glial/neuronal cells in vitro, sums up the high-throughput generated data with systems biology approaches, goes to the in vivo mouse models, until it is ready to go back to the clinic via the identification of novel diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers by artificial intelligence and the proposition of new therapeutic targets and approaches.

CNS Homeostasis and Pathology: