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New Grant Will Unlock Workings of Glymphatic System

Monday, August 15, 2022

A decade ago, researchers in the lab of Maiken Nedergaard, M.D., D.M.Sc., answered a basic question of biology that up to that point had eluded scientists: how is waste removed from the brain?  The discovery of what is now known as the glymphatic system and subsequent research have transformed the way we study a range of neurological disorders and critical brain functions.  A new $15 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will bring together several teams of researchers to accelerate our understanding of the complex mechanics that control this system, with an eye toward the development of new therapies for diseases like Alzheimer’s.

The new research program will be led by Nedergaard, co-director of the Center for Translational Neuromedicine, and involve scientists and engineers from the University of Rochester, Penn State University, Boston University, and the University of Copenhagen.  The research is being funded through The BRAIN Initiative, a massive research program supported by NIH and several other federal research agencies that aims to fill gaps in our current knowledge of the brain’s organization and function.

The glymphatic system – a network of plumbing that runs parallel to blood vessels and pumps cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) through brain tissue to wash away waste – was all but invisible to the scientific world until 2012 when it was first described in a study published in Science Translational Medicine.  A paper in the journal Science a year later showed that this system operates primarily while we sleep and removes toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease. These findings fundamentally changed scientists’ understanding of the biological purpose of sleep and opened the door to potential new ways to treat neurological disorders.