Aleksandra DECZKOWSKA

Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité

WHO AM I 

I have a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences (SGGW; Poland) and Gent University (Belgium). I did my Ph.D. and post-doctoral training at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel with pioneers in neuroimmunology and immunogenomics, Michal Schwartz and Ido Amit. Currently, I lead the Brain-Immune Communication Lab, at the Immunology and Neuroscience departments at Institut Pasteur in Paris. My lab strives to understand the pathways of immune-to-brain communication in development, ageing, health, and disease so that in the future, we can employ our immune system to help cure our brain.

WHAT WILL I TALK ABOUT

The immune system is the workhorse of global medicine. Whether it’s infection, pain, or recently even cancer, so many of the commonly used drugs are not attacking the health problem directly, but rather employ our immune system to attack it. But could we use the same strategy to help with neurological diseases? With Alzheimer’s? Schizophrenia? Long Covid? To address this question we first need to understand how the immune system shapes brain function under physiological conditions, in its development, day-to-day activity, and ageing. My lab focuses on one such immune-to-brain communication interface, the choroid plexus, a surface sensing the immune system on one side, and on the other producing the liquid which nourishes and washes the brain. We hope that one day we will be able to employ the pathways regulating brain function through this interface to cure neurological conditions.