Inflammation in the brain is bad, right?
Shruti Sharma, assistant professor of immunology at the Tufts University School of Medicine, suggests that may not always be the case.
Shruti Sharma, assistant professor of immunology, studies how the immune system knows when to fight—and when to heal.
Shruti Sharma is an assistant professor of immunology at Tufts University School of Medicine. She earned her B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the University of Mumbai in India and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Sharma’s research explores how the body senses danger signals from both germs and its own cells—and how those signals help control inflammation and repair damaged tissues. Her lab aims to uncover how these immune defense strategies contribute to a state of health and why these same defense systems sometimes go awry, contributing to diseases linked to aging, autoimmunity, and neurodegeneration.
Brain Inflammation May Not Always Be a Villain
When we think about inflammation in the brain, it’s usually in a negative light, as something that damages cells or contributes to diseases like Alzheimer’s.
But in my lab, we’ve been studying a molecule called STING.
STING is involved in the body’s immune response. It helps trigger inflammation when there’s a threat, like an infection.
We wanted to understand what happens to the brain when STING isn’t there, especially as animals get older. So, my lab looked at mice genetically engineered to lack STING.
What we saw was striking. As these mice naturally aged, they had trouble with memory and movement: problems that look a lot like the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
That told us something important. Some kinds of inflammation, like that triggered by STING, may actually help the brain stay balanced and healthy with age.
This finding challenges the common view that all inflammation is bad. And it’s a reminder that the immune system’s role in aging is complex.
It also matters for drug development. Some experimental Alzheimer’s therapies are designed to block STING activity, based on the assumption that less inflammation is always better. But our work suggests that shutting it down completely could do more harm than good.
We’re continuing to explore how STING supports the brain’s immune environment—and how it may function in other organs as well. The more we understand these pathways, the better we can design treatments that protect healthy function throughout the body as we age.
Read More:
[Cell Reports] – Microglial STING is a central safeguard against neurological decline with age
[Tufts Now] – Immune Molecule Long Tied to Inflammation May Benefit the Aging Brain
