As we age, our immune cells in the brain stop doing their job of maintaining the insulation around nerve fibres, and this loss of insulation is linked to declining mental sharpness. This matters because age-related cognitive decline—slower thinking, poorer memory—affects daily life for millions, yet no treatments exist to prevent it. The insulation, called myelin, degrades with age, and the researchers have discovered that brain-resident immune cells called microglia are essential for keeping myelin healthy. When microglia malfunction in ageing, myelin structure breaks down. The team will use a unique bank of human brain tissue from people whose cognitive abilities were tracked over their lifetimes, alongside experiments in mice, to pinpoint exactly how ageing microglia lose this supportive function. They will then test two approaches to rejuvenate microglia in aged mice: wiping out most microglia so the survivors repopulate the brain with younger-like cells, or boosting a signalling molecule called Wnt that is active in young microglia but fades with age. If successful, this fundamental science could identify new drug targets for preserving cognitive function in older age.
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Decreased intellect with normal ageing can lead to problems with day-to-day living, yet there are no treatments that prevent this decline. Proper intellect requires the insulation which wraps around nerve fibres in the central nervous system, called myelin. Changes in the structure of myelin occur with ageing e.g. myelin unravels or becomes thicker, and these changes correlate with reduced intellect in ageing. Ensuring the proper structure of myelin could be a promising therapeutic approach to improve intellect in ageing. However, it is unclear what controls myelin structure. Work from my lab and others revealed a new player in controlling the structure of myelin and intellect: immune cells called microglia, which live in the brain. We show that in the absence of microglia in human and mouse brain, changes in myelin structure occur like those seen in ageing. This means that microglia are needed for the proper structure of myelin. Since we know microglia do not function properly in ageing, this leads to my proposal that changes in microglia with ageing contribute to altered myelin structure and intellectual decline. The overall aim is to understand how microglia lose their ability to support myelin structure with ageing, and how we can target this to improve intellect in ageing. The first objective is to identify the changes in ageing microglia that are associated with unhealthy myelin structure, by looking at how microglia genes are abnormally regulated. We will compare this to changes in cells that make myelin, called oligodendrocytes, to understand how the communication between microglia and oligodendrocytes changes in ageing. In humans, we will use a unique bank of brain tissue from aged individuals whose intellect was measured over their lifetime. This will allow us to use a new approach of looking at genes in individual cells on intact brain tissue to correlate changes in microglia, oligodendrocytes and myelin, to intellect. We will complement this with parallel studies in mice by comparing gene regulation in microglia and oligodendrocytes in aged mice to those in young mice. We will narrow down the causes by comparing genes in aged cells to those in genetically altered mice in which manipulation of microglia causes the changes in myelin structure which are also seen in ageing. The second objective is to understand how changes in microglia with ageing influences their ability to support myelin structure. To determine whether aged microglia lack the ability to support healthy myelin structure, we will transplant them into a mouse which doesn't have microglia and see if myelin is formed appropriately. To determine whether aged microglia actively make myelin unhealthy, we will transplant them into a young mice and see if myelin structure is changed. The third objective is to test whether manipulating aged microglia to become 'younger' can restore myelin integrity and improve intellect. We will do this using two proof-of-concept approaches, by manipulating microglia cells and molecules. To achieve the former, we will kill off a large proportion of the microglia and allow the remaining microglia to divide and re-populate. We know from previous work that these newly formed microglia appear like/behave like 'younger' microglia. Second, we will use genetic methods to increase the amount of a signalling molecule called Wnt in the microglia of aged mice. Wnt signalling is active in young microglia, but less active in old age. Additional pathways identified from Aim 1 can also be tested. We will test whether myelin integrity and intellect in these aged mice is improved following our interventions. This proposal thus links problems with microglia and myelin in ageing with decreased intellect, and will identify new targets for therapeutic intervention.
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