Project description
Multiple sclerosis (MS) evolves from an early inflammatory phase driven by peripheral immune cell infiltration to a progressive stage characterized by chronic, compartmentalized inflammation within the central nervous system. As the disease advances, lesion location, cellular composition, and underlying mechanisms shift, with increasing involvement of cortical and subpial regions and reduced blood–brain barrier disruption. Understanding the mechanisms that drive this transition to progressive disease is a central goal of this work.
This project focuses on two complementary mechanisms that may underlie disease progression. First, it examines how persistent, organized immune cell aggregates in the meninges contribute to local inflammation and drive neurodegeneration in adjacent brain tissue. Second, it investigates how inflammatory signals and damage may propagate along neuronal connections, linking white matter lesions to grey matter degeneration. Together, these aims seek to define how localized and distributed inflammatory processes interact to shape lesion development and progression, providing insight into the drivers of chronic MS pathology.