My PD Story

Giving Brain Immune Cells a Boost as a New Preventative Parkinson’s Therapy 

Immune cells play a critical role in protecting our bodies from infection and disease. As we slow down with age, these cells also become less effective. Aging is the greatest risk factor for Parkinson’s disease (PD), so learning how immune cells are affected by aging and how PD-related mutations may accelerate such impacts is of keen interest to researchers.  

Rebecca Wallings, PhD, a recipient of a Parkinson’s Foundation Launch Award, is investigating how aging impairs a certain type of immune cell outside the brain — and how this impairment impacts cells within the brain that contribute to the development of PD.  

Immune cells can be divided into two groups:  

1. Innate immune cells that are the first responders to injuries and exposures. 

2. Adaptive immune cells that “learn” from past infections to provide enhanced protection from repeat threats in the future.  

These two types of cells communicate and collaborate in complex ways to help the body recover quickly and stay healthy.  

Dr. Wallings, working in the lab of Dr. Malu Tansey at the University of Florida, has previously found that a PD-related mutation causes innate immune cells outside the brain in to become “exhausted,” unable to respond to infections or other inflammatory alarms in the body. Since these immune cells are so involved with other cell types to keep the brain healthy, this aging-related exhaustion likely has hidden causes and consequences worth exploring. 

In her upcoming experiments, Dr. Wallings will use human cell samples from donors with and without PD to see if innate immune cell exhaustion prevents them from being able to communicate with healthy adaptive immune cells. She will then utilize mice with and without PD-related mutations to better understand how this immune cell exhaustion plays into the progressive neurodegeneration common to PD, measuring and comparing brain health over time. 

“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.” 

There is evidence that immune cell exhaustion is due to malfunctioning mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cells that provide the energy they need to perform their functions. Delving into this further, Dr. Wallings will also test if reinforcing or repairing these immune cell mitochondria could have potential to serve as a future preventative treatment option for PD. 

Asked about the impact of her research and how this award supports it, Dr. Wallings said, “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.”  

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