Dozens of research teams around the world are working to halt, treat and even prevent Alzheimer’s disease, which silently develops in the brain for more than a decade before symptoms appear. Although recent years have brought important advances, researchers continue to search for therapies that can more effectively alter the course of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

Professor 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.