When Associate Professor Myriam Heiman began studying neuroscience as a postdoc, scientists interested in neurodegenerative diseases had long reported evidence of inflammation, or the activation of immune responses, but few were claiming it was an early driver of disease.
“It was initially thought it might be perhaps more of a secondary response to neural damage,” Heiman said.
Similarly, in the late 1990s as Picower Professor Li-Huei Tsai began focusing her research on understanding Alzheimer’s disease, she had no inkling of how deeply she would now be delving into the central nervous system’s immune activity.
