Podcasts · From Our Neurons to Yours
What an immune invasion teaches us about Alzheimer’s disease | Julia Belk
· 46 min
Episode What an immune invasion teaches us about Alzheimer’s disease | Julia Belk
Today we’re going to be talking about a recent study that is rewriting neuroscience textbooks, potentially changing our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease, our brain’s immune system, and the potential for immunotherapy for the brain.
Today’s guest is Julia Belk, lead author of a new study that discovered that as we age, immune cells from the blood somehow cross the supposedly impenetrable blood–brain barrier, and replace the brain’s native immune cells, the microglia. The findings help us understand growing links between the aging immune system and Alzheimer’s disease and why certain blood mutations – ones traditionally linked to cancer – might actually protect against neurodegeneration.
Julia is an HHMI Hannah Gray postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Sidd Jaiswal at Stanford Medicine. Their research was supported by the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience at Wu Tsai Neuro.
Learn More
• Jaiswal Lab at Stanford Medicine • Mutant microglia and resilience to Alzheimer’s disease • Blood Cells Replenish Microglia in the Brain as People Age (The Scientist, 2026) • Peripheral Blood Cells Replenish Aging Human Microglia (Neuroscience News, 2026) • Aging brains welcome reinforcements from outside immune cells (Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, 2026) • Blood Cells Mutated in Old Age Protect Against Alzheimer’s Disease (Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, 2023) • Why Our Memory Slips After Age 50 (Ground Truths, a Substack from Eric Topol, 2026 • Somatic mutations reveal the ontogeny of microglia in human ageing (Nature, 2026) • Clonal hematopoiesis is associated with protection from Alzheimer’s disease (Nature Medicine, 2023)
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Links in the notes 14
- https://www.jaiswallab.org/
- https://brainresilience.stanford.edu/research/funded-research/mutant-microglia-and-resilience-alzheimer-s-disease
- https://www.the-scientist.com/blood-cells-replenish-microglia-in-the-brain-as-people-age-74859
- https://neurosciencenews.com/blood-cells-aging-microglia-31195/
- https://brainresilience.stanford.edu/news/aging-brains-welcome-reinforcements-outside-immune-cells
- https://brainresilience.stanford.edu/news/blood-cells-mutated-old-age-protect-against-alzheimer-s-disease
- https://erictopol.substack.com/p/why-our-memory-slips-after-age-50
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10939-0
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02397-2
- https://www.buzzsprout.com/2112871/fan_mail/new
- https://www.buzzsprout.com/2112871/share
- https://twitter.com/stanfordbrain
- https://www.facebook.com/WuTsaiNeurosciencesInstitute
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/wu-tsai-neurosciences-institute
Transcript
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