Pioneering for decades what is now emerging as the next frontier

Prof. Michal Schwartz of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Brain Sciences Department has developed an innovative strategy for treating Alzheimer’s disease. A recipient of the Israel Prize in Life Sciences, Schwartz pioneered research showing that the body’s most protected organ - the brain - is tightly dependent on the immune system for its lifelong functioning, maintenance and repair. These findings overturned the long-held dogma that the brain was entirely isolated from immune activity, and that any immune activity within the brain was inherently detrimental and should therefore be suppressed.

Schwartz also revealed the critical role of age-related immune dysfunction in driving the progression of brain aging. In particular, she proposed that, regardless of a neurodegenerative disease’s primary cause, age-related decline of the immune system fuels brain inflammation, a major driver of disease progression. This finding suggested that removing amyloid plaques, long considered a hallmark of Alzheimer’s, is not sufficient to halt the disease. Her discoveries opened a new path toward developing treatments for neurodegenerative diseases by targeting the immune system.