00;00;05;03 – 00;00;32;06
VO
Welcome to Beyond Lab Walls, a podcast from the Salk Institute. Join hosts Isabella Davis and Nicole Mlynaryk on a journey behind the scenes of the renowned research institute in San Diego, California. We’re taking you inside the lab to hear the latest discoveries and cutting-edge neuroscience plant biology, cancer, aging, and more. Explore the fascinating world of science while listening to the stories of the brilliant minds behind it.

00;00;32;09 – 00;00;50;06
VO
Here at Salk, we’re unlocking the secrets of life itself and sharing them beyond lab walls.

00;00;50;08 – 00;01;12;14
Nicole
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Beyond Lab Walls. I’m your host, Nicole, and I’m excited to share more of the fascinating people and projects here at Salk with you all. I’m sitting here today with Lara Labarta-Bajo, a postdoctoral researcher in Nicola Allen’s lab here at Salk. Lara’s work, as you’ll get to hear in a moment, really embodies a lot of what’s happening at Salk right now.

00;01;12;16 – 00;01;39;28
Nicole
2024 has been deemed Salk’s “Year of Healthy Aging,” so we’re really trying to understand what aging is at all levels. What does aging do to our DNA, our cells, our organs, our cognition, our behavior, and how can we make sure we’re not just increasing our lifespans, but also our health spans? We’re also excited to share that Salk is on its way to launching several new projects and partnerships in the emerging field of neuroimmunology.

00;01;40;00 – 00;01;55;22
Nicole
Lara’s work is smack dab in the middle of all of that. She’s studying the crosstalk between the brain and the immune system, and how this relationship evolves as we age. I’m really excited to learn more about it, so without further ado, welcome, Lara. We’re so glad to have you.

00;01;55;25 – 00;02;01;13
Lara
Thank you so much, Nicole. I’m really, really happy to be here to share some of my thoughts and my work.

00;02;01;16 – 00;02;12;29
Nicole
Before we get to know more about your research. I’d love to get to know a little more about you. So I know from our previous chats that you are originally from Barcelona, so what was it like growing up in Spain?

00;02;13;01 – 00;02;37;00
Lara
I can say that I’m pretty spoiled I think. Growing up in Barcelona, you know, we had the beach right there. So I’ve always been a pretty outdoorsy person. So from a young age it was very easy to kind of get around, do many activities on the outdoors while enjoying, you know, good quality of life. Barcelona is not a very large city.

00;02;37;02 – 00;03;03;10
Lara
So even as a teenager or a young adult, you’re able to really explore it very extensively with, you know, just your public transport ticket and move around, visit different areas of the city. I was able to and very fortunate to be able to study my undergraduate there, which was great because Barcelona within Spain is kind of a hub in terms of education and companies and development.

00;03;03;11 – 00;03;12;10
Lara
I think it’s kind of a it’s a funny comparison, but some people will even compare the region where we’re still the is, and they will refer to it as the ‘Little California’ of Spain.

00;03;12;10 – 00;03;19;03
Nicole
Yeah, I have to say, a lot of what you’re saying sounds like San Diego, minus the good public transportation. We’re getting their, but yeah.

00;03;19;06 – 00;03;45;08
Lara
Yeah! So it was great. I did my undergraduate in biotechnology because Barcelona has a lot of the opportunity to do science. So I got into science starting there. There are a lot of awesome, really good researchers. Funny enough, my husband’s dad and mom are both professors. So I actually met my husband in college and I took classes with his dad.

00;03;45;08 – 00;04;13;16
Lara
So it’s kind of interesting in Barcelona. Yeah, yeah. So it’s kind of ingrained in the family this strong science interest. My parents, on the other hand, are more engineers. And my brother is actually a mathematician. So they were more into more abstract, number-heavy people. So I was always kind of in between, more interested in the biology of our bodies, kind of also putting it together with my big interests in the outdoors.

00;04;13;18 – 00;04;45;03
Lara
I’m really big fan of sports, sporting activities. I’ve been a dancer my whole life, but also ever since I moved to San Diego obviously I’ve taken up on surfing, kite surfing, we tow, we do every kind of outdoor activity we can get our hands on. Me and my husband, that’s the we. So I really always enjoyed just challenging my physical abilities and learning new sports and activities.

00;04;45;03 – 00;05;07;02
Lara
So I think the dancing background really helped because as I was discussing with a really good colleague of mine in the lab, she’s also a ballet dancer.

Nicole
You did ballet?

Lara
Yes, I did ballet as a kid. Yeah. So it was interesting to talk to her about this, because we think that by doing ballet and dancing early in life really wires our brain in a certain way.

00;05;07;04 – 00;05;08;11
Nicole
In what certain way?

00;05;08;11 – 00;05;31;06
Lara
It really makes you work your body in a very controlled manner, so you really become aware of every muscle in your body. And so I think that’s why then I became very interested in, in doing other activities, because you kind of have a lot of control over your muscles and your movements.

00;05;31;08 – 00;05;33;21
Nicole
So you’re good at everything is what I’m hearing.

00;05;33;23 – 00;06;00;23
Lara
No! I like to challenge myself with everything because I feel like I have a good foundation. I was very fortunate to be able to be exposed to all of these things. So I guess overall, growing up in Spain was great. But then when it came to looking further into my career after undergrad, I felt like I wanted to move abroad to really explore other systems in terms of science.

00;06;00;26 – 00;06;31;11
Lara
When I was doing my undergrad, I never knew I really wanted to do research. I guess I didn’t have that example in my parents because they were on a different route with engineering. They didn’t do research, so it kind of took me a while to find my way, but I had an opportunity during my sophomore year in college where I got the opportunity to do a short-term summer internship at Virginia Tech in the lab of Josep Bassaganya Riera.

00;06;31;14 – 00;06;55;19
Lara
It was a lab that was focused on immunology and at that point I had only taken one class in immunology. I actually almost failed that class because I found it difficult and kind of very confusing in the way it was being explained to me. That was definitely not my favorite subject, because I hadn’t really done good at it in school.

00;06;55;19 – 00;07;26;05
Lara
So I went and did this internship for three months, and that really changed my perspective because I was able to do research on different topics related to diet and immune system, the intestinal tract and infection, and that really led me to see that I learned a lot by being a little bit more hands-on. So by getting out of the classroom, that really helped me to understand better some of the concepts.

00;07;26;10 – 00;08;16;01
Lara
In getting more practical experience in the lab, I realized I actually really liked the lab and thinking about experiment design and doing experiments and collaborating with teammates and discussing your findings. So when I came back from that short three-month summer internship, I realized that I first of all, I really liked immunology, but also I really liked the American system in terms of research. I really liked the dynamics of the lab, the way ideas were being tossed around, how you had the flexibility to just think out loud and I honestly felt like even as an undergraduate, if you had ideas that you had researched and worked on, you were being heard.

00;08;16;03 – 00;08;42;06
Lara
Whereas I know that other systems can, other places maybe can be a little more hierarchical. That made me see that, maybe this is a system of thought that I want to join for my future career. That’s kind of why I was thinking about going abroad as soon as I finished my undergraduate.

00;08;42;09 – 00;08;52;14
Nicole
You shared a little bit about what was drawing you into immunology. Can you tell us more about that? Like what about immunology is so exciting to you? Or, you know, why is immunology important?

00;08;52;16 – 00;09;23;10
Lara
I think immunology is a window for us to understand physiology. So physiology meaning how does our body really work? And also when there’s issues, when there’s trouble with the body, who fixes that? So I feel like immunology is a field that gives you a very system-view of your body, meaning it’s not restricted to one location in your body.

00;09;23;13 – 00;09;47;11
Lara
If you study the immune response to an infectious agent, such as a virus, you’re rarely focused on one single part of your body. You have to always keep in mind that the immune system goes around your body. Your immune system visits your skin. It visits your brain. It visits your intestine. When it’s working, you know, it’s constantly circulating.

00;09;47;14 – 00;09;56;25
Lara
So it’s surveying, making sure everything is in place. So I felt like the immune system was a window for me to understand better how our body works.

00;09;56;27 – 00;10;16;03
Nicole
You know, you mentioned again, it’s set up basically to help protect us from these dangers in the outside world. Pathogens, viruses, anything that’s kind of foreign in our body. So can you tell us what does that immune response actually look like? You know, what’s the first step when we interact with something foreign?

00;10;16;05 – 00;10;37;27
Lara
So the immune system is there to protect you when you encounter an infection. So you go around in the cold, right? In the wintertime, you go to your job, take the subway. In the subway someone’s sneezing, someone’s sneezing. You’re sitting next to them. A couple days after, three days after, you start having a fever. Right? So what what happened there?

00;10;38;00 – 00;11;02;13
Lara
What happened is that birus that probably was floating around got into your body. And then your immune system, since it’s like the army of your body, it’s constantly walking around, patrolling, trying to see if there’s anything that shouldn’t be there. So the moment that happens, this is within hours of this, a pathogen or this virus entering your body within hours.

00;11;02;13 – 00;11;17;05
Lara
Your immune system already knows that that’s there. So what does it do when it finds finds out it’s there? So the first thing is it sends a memo around, oh, there’s a pathogen here in this particular place. It sends a memo across your body.

00;11;17;08 – 00;11;20;02
Nicole
So kind of warning. Warning. Something’s here. Yeah.

00;11;20;03 – 00;11;46;18
Lara
Yes. Get ready, get ready. Yeah. We don’t know what this is yet, but get ready because something’s coming.

Nicole
Yep.

Lara
No, seriously, it’s like that. Then the immune system starts putting together a small army, you know, or a small army that over time becomes really, really large. So within a week after a pathogen enters your body, your immune system can create an army just for you to have an idea.

00;11;46;18 – 00;11;52;19
Lara
It’s it can amplify itself by 10,000 times. It’s this magnitude.

00;11;52;26 – 00;11;55;02
Nicole
So in terms of like the number of cells that are involved?

00;11;55;02 – 00;12;08;18
Lara
Yes. So the specific soldiers, which could be T-cells, so lymphocytes. So a single lymphocyte can potentially multiply 10,000 times. So they can increment their numbers at this scale. It’s logarithmic.

00;12;08;21 – 00;12;11;09
Nicole
That’s a that’s a lot of action happening.

00;12;11;13 – 00;12;24;06
Lara
It’s a lot of action. It’s a huge expansion of your internal army. So while this army is being assembled, what happens with the rest of your body? Because that requires a lot of energy. You need to feed the troops.

00;12;24;13 – 00;12;25;17
Nicole
Sure. Yep.

00;12;25;20 – 00;12;50;02
Lara
So while all of this is happening, it’s possible that other organs of your body got the memo. So they slow down in order to be able to allow this army to fight the infection. So maybe the rest of your body is a little bit on hold in the meantime. Okay, so once this army has successfully eradicated the infection, then it’s time to rest.

00;12;50;05 – 00;13;12;04
Lara
So you need to wind down.

Nicole
Yeah. A lot just happened.

Lara
A lot just happened. So the rest of your body needs to now get also the new memo, the new signal that, hey the threat is gone. So now you can go back to resuming your normal activity and your immune system, your army now needs to kind of wind down, but also the immune system as it winds down.

00;13;12;11 – 00;13;49;09
Lara
It also creates memory, which means that it learns from this experience. So now that they’ve bought this pathogen, they learn from the experience. And some of these soldiers will remain for your whole life. Some of these will remember how to fight that specific virus. And then, you know, if years down the line you get that cold again, that one soldier will be like, guys, I have the instructions on how to eradicate this and I will allow you to actually get rid of it much faster.

00;13;49;12 – 00;14;11;08
Nicole
So there’s a lot happening. It’s a lot of different messages happening all across the body. I want to introduce the word inflammation into this conversation because we tend to associate inflammation as being this bad thing. But as you and I know, inflammation is really just all of this communication. It’s kind of the term that describes all of these signals.

00;14;11;10 – 00;14;32;11
Nicole
So I’m curious, you know, you’ve talked about how the immune system and inflammation kind of connects the whole body. You’re a trained immunologist. You’re studying all of that. But right now you work in a neuroscience lab. So I’m curious, you know, how did these topics relate to you? How does the immune system interact with the brain?

00;14;32;13 – 00;14;57;18
Lara
Yeah. So this is a big question people are trying to understand better now because sometimes when you have groups of scientists that are really specialized in their own topic, it’s also a good exercise to try to put them together in the same room so that they talk to each other and try to bridge different disciplines, because that ultimately makes us know more about how our body works.

00;14;57;20 – 00;15;10;10
Lara
So there’s been many more people that have started to appreciate that. For instance, you have an immune system really close to your brain. Above your brain, actually in the meninges.

00;15;10;13 – 00;15;11;16
Nicole
What are the meninges?

00;15;11;16 – 00;15;23;27
Lara
So the meninges is just a layer of like foam that covers your brain so that if you get hit it can buffer there.

00;15;23;27 – 00;15;25;15
Nicole
So it’s a protective helmet.

00;15;25;19 – 00;16;01;27
Lara
There’s a protective helmet. Yeah. So that helmet is actually full of immune cells. That is not the topic of my research, but that came to be more known within the last 10 to 15 years. So that made one connection between them. Perhaps the nervous system and the immune system are actually talking to each other. There’s also some work showing that as we develop molecules that are typically studied in the context of infection, they can also play roles in how your brain develops.

00;16;01;29 – 00;16;26;10
Lara
So that was another link that connected the both of them. However, I still think that, there’s much more work to be done in understanding how these two systems talk to each other. We don’t actually really know how when you get an infection in your lung or on your skin, how does that message get transported to your nervous system?

00;16;26;16 – 00;16;39;01
Lara
How does the nervous system interpret the message? So what does it do with it?

00;16;39;03 – 00;17;18;12
VO
If you’re enjoying this episode of Beyond Lab Walls, be sure to check out our other channels at Salk.edu. There you can join our new exclusive media channel, Salk Streaming, where you’ll find interviews with our scientists, videos on our recent studies and public lectures by our world-renowned professors. You can also explore our award-winning magazine, Inside Salk, and join our monthly newsletter to stay up to date on the world within these walls.

00;17;18;15 – 00;17;40;25
Nicole
You know the term neuroinflammation and brain fog and things have been coming up more. There is this question of like, right, if there’s a virus in my lungs, why am I suddenly getting neurological, psychological symptoms? I mean, the immune system has to do so much. I imagine there’s initial signals that are like, hey, something’s going on here. Hey, slow down, brain, we got to fight this thing.

00;17;40;27 – 00;17;59;04
Nicole
Hey, brain, you’ve got to protect yourself because we don’t want you to get infected. But also can viruses actually get into the brain, or does the immune system overreact and then cause trauma in the brain, etc.? I get the sense we’re still answering all of these questions.

00;17;59;07 – 00;18;35;12
Lara
Yeah, no, you’re right. Everything you describe is true. There are some viruses that can get directly in your brain. Rabies can get in your brain, right? Yeah. Several viruses can get into your brain. And when that happens, you can have dramatic effects. The question I’m more intrigued about, though, is when you just have a common cold and it doesn’t cause major effects on you, how does that experience of getting a cold every year get transferred to your brain?

00;18;35;15 – 00;18;59;09
Lara
Does the brain actually see that every year you’re getting an infection? What does it do about it? You know, with brain fog, we’re starting to see that in people that were infected with Covid, right? This is a lung infection. So how is it that these peripheral infections can have an infection in your brain? I think here’s where, Nicola’s lab is making strides in really understanding that.

00;18;59;09 – 00;19;27;12
Lara
And this is such a big question. How can we break it down so that we can really work on this and understand this better? So first of all, which signals from the immune system are getting read by the brain? Also, which cell type is there at the interface between your brain and the rest of your body? And we think astrocytes are cells doing just that.

00;19;27;12 – 00;19;55;28
Lara
So astrocytes are star-shaped cells of the brain that are positioned in a privileged spot, I think. So they are right there wrapping around the blood vessels that provide blood to your brain. Your brain needs a lot of energy to work. So the blood vessels are inside the brain. So astrocytes literally wrap around these blood vessels, which are the roads that bring nutrients.

00;19;56;01 – 00;20;06;11
Lara
And one of their main functions is to actually take up those nutrients and transfer them to the neurons so that they can operate in the right way.

00;20;06;14 – 00;20;26;09
Nicole
The neurons being the other types of cells in the brain that are actually sending the electrical signals throughout the brain, doing that control of our thoughts, movements, controlling our behavior. But these astrocytes are kind of these supporting cells.

00;20;26;12 – 00;20;38;01
Lara
So I really think that astrocytes can also go beyond, picking up nutrients and providing them to neurons. They can also send and read these memos that I was telling you about earlier.

00;20;38;01 – 00;20;39;13
Nicole
Which are getting sent through the blood.

00;20;39;14 – 00;21;02;10
Lara
Exactly. So these memos, molecularly speaking, would be in the form of what we call inflammatory molecules. So I think these inflammatory molecules perhaps are being picked up by the astrocyte and read. And now the astrocyte is at this interface between the rest of your body and your brain, which means between the rest of your body and your neurons.

00;21;02;12 – 00;21;12;24
Nicole
You’re saying they kind of get the message from the rest of the body. They pick up the phone and get that message, and then they decide what to do with it and decide what to tell the neurons to do. Got it.

00;21;12;25 – 00;21;38;04
Lara
Yeah. Exactly. So in trying to understand this bigger question, how does this peripheral threat affect your brain? I think the astrocytes are some of these soldiers that are the barrier between your brain in your peripheral system that are picking up the message and deciding how to read it, interpreted and conveying the message to the neurons. That’s what we’re working on in the lab.

00;21;38;06 – 00;22;02;00
Nicole
That’s exciting. And I know that a lot of the research has been focused on neurons. We’ve only kind of recently been starting to really look at astrocytes and what they’re doing. So yeah, Nicola’s lab is really on the forefront of this research.

00;22;02;03 – 00;22;25;07
Nicole
We talked about, you know, Salk is really focused on healthy aging right now. And again, Nicola is specifically looking at how astrocytes work, but also how astrocytes are affected by aging. So can you tell us a little bit about, what do we know so far about how this immune system-brain interface is shaped by aging?

00;22;25;10 – 00;22;49;15
Lara
Yeah. So, aging in general in many different organs of your body, in your liver, in intestine, nervous system is typically linked with inflammation. So there’s typically a link between aging and more inflammation. But what what happens in the brain? And this is one of the questions that Nicola went out to ask. And what happened specifically in different cells in the brain.

00;22;49;17 – 00;23;26;16
Lara
And so, what many different labs have shown in the last 5 to 10 years is that actually the cells that change the most when we age are not the neurons themselves, but are all of these other support cells that include astrocytes. So astrocytes for some reason change more in aging compared to neurons. And what Nicola’s work identified is that astrocytes in regions of the brain that control how we move, they are actually very inflammatory compared to astrocytes that are in other regions of the brain.

00;23;26;16 – 00;23;29;19
Nicole
What does that mean, that they’re very inflammatory?

00;23;29;21 – 00;24;01;05
Lara
So actually what what we found is that astrocytes, turn on programs that an immune cell would turn on when there’s an infection. So they turned on antiviral programs, meaning they turn on genes that are typically associated with immune defense. We don’t know why they turn them on in specific regions of our brain. We don’t know what those programs or what that does to the astrocyte.

00;24;01;07 – 00;24;16;19
Lara
And we don’t know how that affects the activity of the neurons and the way we move, because this is in motor regions of the brain. So this is what I’m working on very intensely.

00;24;16;21 – 00;24;41;16
Nicole
Yeah. No, I mean of course we, we all know whether you’re in a disease state or not, movement is affected in aging. Our control of our movement is affected in aging. And yeah, I mean, I guess most people would think like, oh, is that because neurons are dying or getting weaker? But it sounds like it’s actually a lot of these support cells in that part of the brain that are becoming more inflamed.

00;24;41;23 – 00;24;45;02
Nicole
That’s a totally different way of thinking about it.

00;24;45;04 – 00;25;25;20
Lara
Exactly. I read a paper that Nicola’s Lab published where they first shared some of these results, and as an immunologist, I became really interested in trying to see what the connection would be between immunity and astrocytes in the aged brain because of that observation specifically. So that got me really interested in astrocyte biology and neuroscience because of this link in aging, you know, just aging, in the absence of any other alteration, just healthy aging induces this type of response in the brain.

00;25;25;27 – 00;25;35;06
Nicole
Right. Yeah. So we’re not even taking, you know, in a case of like dementia or Alzheimer’s or, you know, a different disorder, disease, just regular healthy aging. You’re seeing this happen.

00;25;35;06 – 00;25;55;16
Lara
Exactly. So maybe, you know, maybe this is protective. Maybe this is preventing us from having lesser quality of life. Or maybe this is a mechanism that’s unfortunately promoting our deterioration. We don’t know that. Right. So it’s still an open question.

00;25;55;18 – 00;26;33;00
Nicole
So we’re seeing inflammation in the brain increase over time over aging. You mentioned something too about, you know, just because the immune system and the nervous system are present throughout our lives, the nervous system has in some way it’s been there for every cold, every infection, every sickness that you’ve experienced. Is there some sort of, again, like lasting memory or lasting damage just from being alive that whole time, where your immune system stores that information and that just naturally, over time, has to affect the brain or has to lead to increased inflammation?

00;26;33;02 – 00;26;58;27
Lara
Yeah. This is one thing that we’re trying to investigate. Does our life experience affect how these astrocytes in the brain end up being in aging? Right. And when we talk about life experience, that includes, as you said, well, I’ve had a cold every year of my adult life. Does this history of infection play any role in astrocytes’ state in our brain?

00;26;58;27 – 00;27;15;23
Lara
Because, you know, you have to keep in mind that astrocytes are there throughout your life. Astrocytes are non-dividing cells. Like you’re born. You develop your brain, you have a certain number of them. And unless you have major injury they will remain there.

00;27;15;23 – 00;27;19;00
Nicole
Sure. So the ones you were born with are the ones you’ve got till the end.

00;27;19;00 – 00;27;46;19
Lara
Yeah. They’re there with you throughout your life. So they accumulate life experience in many different ways. So the way I’m trying to study this is, do they accumulate experience in terms of infection? Do they also see what you went through through the years and does that then ultimately, does that astrocyte hold that information? Does that affect then how you move or how your neurons work?

00;27;46;22 – 00;28;09;03
Nicole
It’s gotten these messages of colds, of illness, of different damage throughout its life. And is that just kind of creating a higher baseline of inflammation? And if those signals are maybe not so good for the neurons, you know, what does that do? Or are they good for the neurons and they’re on because they’re trying to protect us over life because we need more protection?

00;28;09;03 – 00;28;20;05
Nicole
Yeah. So there’s a lot of questions left to answer. In your research in Nicola’s lab, have there been any particularly exciting projects or interesting findings so far?

00;28;20;07 – 00;28;50;02
Lara
Yeah. So one finding that we made recently is that a lot of the findings we have in astrocytes are based on mouse studies. So one of the exciting findings we had was to observe that many of these inflammatory signatures, or states of astrocytes, are also happening in the human brain. So this is one of the findings that really excites me a lot, because it means that perhaps this is also true in humans.

00;28;50;02 – 00;29;07;25
Lara
And then if it is true, then our mouse studies become even more relevant. Another thing that gets me really excited is to see that in the lab, we’re able to actually manipulate this inflammation in astrocytes.

00;29;07;27 – 00;29;12;28
Nicole
Can you share how you’re doing that manipulation? How are you manipulating the immune system?

00;29;13;01 – 00;29;54;04
Lara
So we identified a molecule, a transcription factor specifically, that can read the instructions to trigger an inflammatory state. So when we manipulate the levels and the activity of this molecule, we can see that that has a great impact on the way the mouse moves. And so that has different implications because it means that perhaps if we manipulate a specific molecule that controls a whole program in astrocytes, maybe we can make mice better athletes. Maybe we can make mice move better as they age.

00;29;54;06 – 00;30;15;22
Lara
You know, we can maybe delay the way they lose motor abilities. When we talk about motor abilities too, it’s things as simple as reaching for a glass of water. You know, it’s these typical fine motor movements that really make a difference when we go around your normal life.

00;30;15;22 – 00;30;18;19
Nicole
Yeah, they really affect your quality of life.

00;30;18;20 – 00;30;37;10
Lara
Exactly. So that’s what gets me really excited is that we can identify specific targetable molecules, that if we alter their activity, they can have an impact on the way, in this case, the mouse is moving.

00;30;37;13 – 00;31;00;23
Nicole
That’s fascinating. I mean, yeah, to think about affecting an animal or a human’s movement and improving their movement through aging via their immune system, I would not have thought about that before this conversation. So that’s really exciting. How do you think this field is then going to impact our understanding and treatment of aging in the brain?

00;31;00;23 – 00;31;07;22
Nicole
What do you see in ten, 20 years, the clinical applications of this work being?

00;31;07;24 – 00;31;38;23
Lara
I think there’s been a push to try to extend the period of time when we are healthy rather than trying to live more years. So that’s one important factor. I think our work is pointing towards the direction that perhaps if we can attenuate some of these signals, perhaps we can improve the way our brain deteriorates.

00;31;38;26 – 00;31;54;28
Lara
I personally think we’re a little bit far from therapeutics, but we’re observing along with work by many others, is that perhaps there’s a way to do some sort of peripheral intervention that can improve our brain?

00;31;55;01 – 00;32;24;23
Nicole
That totally makes sense. I mean, we’re just getting to understand what astrocytes even do normally like, let alone, you know, how they’re interacting with the immune system. So it makes sense that we’ve got some ways to go before this is in the clinic. But you can’t get to the clinic unless you know the stuff first. So it’s just really exciting to see Salk being this place where neuroscientists and immunologists can be in the same room, in the same lab and finally asking these questions, you know, so excited to see where this goes.

00;32;24;23 – 00;32;30;16
Nicole
And on that note, what are you hoping to do next in your career? What do you want to work on next?

00;32;30;19 – 00;32;57;10
Lara
I would really like to continue on this path of understanding this communication between our immune system and our brain. I want to understand better how does this immune communication, these immune signals in our blood, in our organ systems, how do they get sent and taken up and read by the astrocytes? And how does that affect the different functions that our brain does?

00;32;57;10 – 00;33;31;27
Lara
Cognition, movement, etc.? And lastly, I would really like to explore more, how can we manipulate astrocytes to improve our brain function? So with this observation that we can manipulate astrocytes and make mice better athletes, can we apply that in the setting of a healthy body? That really gets me really excited just to see the new frontiers that we can push by having astrocytes and the immune system kind of at the center of it all.

00;33;32;00 – 00;33;42;26
Lara
So I’m wishing to, you know, finish my postdoc work, publish some good papers, and then I would really like to establish my own lab to pursue these directions.

00;33;42;28 – 00;33;47;05
Nicole
Well, we’re excited to see you do it. Hopefully you get to do it in San Diego too.

00;33;47;07 – 00;33;49;05
Lara
Yeah, that’d be great. Yeah.

00;33;49;07 – 00;34;08;15
Nicole
Yeah. Well, again, thank you so much for sharing all of this. This is so exciting to see where the field is going. If you want to learn more about Lara’s work, you can visit the Salk Institute website at Salk.edu. And be sure to check out our Fall 2024 issue of Inside Salk magazine, where Lara will also be featured.

00;34;08;18 – 00;34;13;28
Nicole
Again, thank you so much, Lara, for chatting with us and thank you all for listening. See you next time.

00;34;14;00 – 00;34;15;26
Lara
See you. Thank you so much for having me.

00;34;15;29 – 00;34;32;01
Nicole
Thank you.

00;34;32;03 – 00;35;03;23
VO
Beyond Lab Walls is a production of the Salk Office of Communications. To hear the latest science stories coming out of Salk. Subscribe to our podcast and visit Salk.edu to join our new exclusive media channel, Salk Streaming. There you’ll find interviews with our scientists, videos on our recent studies, and public lectures by our world-renowned professors. You can also explore our award-winning magazine, Inside Salk, and join our monthly newsletter to stay up to date on the world within these walls.