Brain HealthReprogramming Brain Immune Memory Could Transform Alzheimer's Treatment
Alzheimer's disease is increasingly understood not simply as a buildup of amyloid-beta plaques, but as a failure of the brain's innate immune system. Microglia — the brain's resident immune cells — can become locked in a damaging, hyper-inflammatory state through epigenetic and metabolic changes. This review synthesizes the science of that 'maladaptive priming' and evaluates a new generation of drugs aimed at reversing it. The therapeutic toolkit includes NLRP3 inflammasome inhibitors, TREM2 receptor activators, metabolic modulators like metformin and rapamycin, BCG vaccination, and specialized pro-resolving lipid mediators. The authors propose combining these approaches in a biomarker-guided, personalized strategy to fundamentally reprogram brain immunity rather than simply suppress symptoms.
