Varvel lab · Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, Emory University School of Medicine
Brain-engrafted monocytes after microglia ablation
Microglia can be depleted and the brain repopulated by monocytes recruited from the blood. Those newcomers look like microglia and sit where microglia sat — but functional equivalence is an assumption, not an observation, and it matters for every therapy that proposes replacing brain immune cells.
Status. Work in Dr. Nicholas Varvel's laboratory at Emory. Methods published as Varvel NH, Ransohoff RM, Neher JJ, Methods in Molecular Biology 2019;2034:293–301.
This hub is still being built. The analysis is underway; the derivation, tables and figures will be posted here as they are finished, the way the completed projects on this site are. What is below is the design and the current state, written up as it stands.
The question
Do peripherally derived monocytes that engraft in the brain after microglial ablation function like the microglia they replace?
How it is being done
- Microglial ablation in mouse models followed by engraftment of peripherally derived monocytes.
- Functional characterization of the engrafted population against resident microglia.
Materials
About & provenance
I am not an author on the published methods chapter; this page describes the laboratory project I worked on.
This page grows as the work does.