Meet a Researcher Studying How Boosting Immune Cells Could Lead to a Preventative Parkinson’s Therapy

Immune cells are vital to protect our bodies from infection and disease. But what happens as they become less effective with age? 

Rebecca Wallings, PhD, is leveraging her Parkinson’s Foundation Launch Award to investigate how aging impairs a type of immune cell outside the brain — and how this impairment impacts the development of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Dr. Wallings is focused on the peripheral immune system (immune cells outside the brain), which researchers suspect plays a part in Parkinson’s.  

“My research is focused on how an aging immune system contributes to Parkinson’s,” said Dr. Wallings. “As you age, your immune system ages with you. Your immune cells can become exhausted, not working as well as they used to. They are very slow, sluggish and not able to resolve inflammation like they used to. We think it is that accumulation of exhausted immune cells that are potentially driving degeneration in the brain.” 

Parkinson’s research has established that inflammation plays a part in PD. However, it has only been in the last 10 years or so that researchers have started to determine that inflammation is not just a byproduct of Parkinson’s, but a contributor to the disease. 

“For the longest time the field thought that inflammation in Parkinson’s was something that was rampant, that there was too much of it,” Dr. Wallings said. “It was something that needed to be decreased to alleviate symptoms. But my research has shown that  the complete opposite might be happening. Instead of dampening an already suppressed immune system, we should try to rejuvenate it to make it work more efficiently.” 

In her research, Dr. Wallings aims to deal with the underlying mechanism that makes immune cells exhausted — mitochondrial dysfunction. Her data suggests that people with certain genetic mutations that cause Parkinson’s have mitochondria that do not work as efficiently as their immune cells age, which causes the cells’ exhaustion.  

In her lab, she is testing if reinforcing or repairing these immune cell mitochondria could have potential to serve as a future preventative treatment option for PD. 

By receiving the Launch Award, Dr. Wallings can take her research further and establish independence in the field. She hopes to run her own lab focused on her immune cells study and their role in PD and feels that this award will greatly assist her transition. 

“My research is at the forefront of a potential paradigm shift in the neurodegeneration field and may change the way researchers think about the role of the immune system in PD,” Dr. Wallings said. “What the Parkinson’s Foundation has done with this award is show me that they are willing to invest in me, and they believe in the potential impact my research may have on the field and, most importantly, on patients’ lives.”  

Meet more Parkinson’s researchers! Explore our My PD Stories featuring PD researchers.