The McAlpine lab investigates immune networks in sleep, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer's disease. Please visit the McAlpine lab website: https://labs.icahn.mssm.edu/mcalpinelab/

The immune system plays an important role in the pathophysiology of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis. We pursue research exploring the role of immune growth factors in regulating glial-peripheral immune cell interactions in neurodegenerative diseases. We have uncovered how the growth factor interleukin-3 (IL-3) coordinates glial-peripheral immune communication and the function of myeloid cells in the brain during Alzheimer's disease (Nature 2021) and multiple sclerosis (Immunity 2023).

Sleep is critical to health, and we should be asleep for a third of our life. Despite its importance more than a third of adults do not get sufficient sleep. We study the bidirectional brain-body circuits that connect sleep and cardiovascular health. We have shown that sleep fragmentation activates hematopoiesis in the bone marrow leading to an oversupply of circulating immune cells which aggravates atherosclerosis (Nature, 2019). We identified a neuro-immune axis linking the brain’s hypothalamus to the control of immune growth factors in the bone marrow. We have also shown that sleep mediates the heterogeneity of hematopoietic stem cells, their epigenetic programming, and the emergence of clonal hematopoiesis (Cell, 2021, J.Ex.Med 2022). Moving forward, we are exploring the many complex pathways and systems that link sleep to immune cell biology and cardiovascular health.