Du et al. show that repeated microglia depletion allows peripheral monocytes to engraft the brain. Brain-engrafted macrophages acquire transcriptional and epigenetic identities distinct from microglia and adopt a border-associated macrophage-like phenotype. Monocytes from both blood and skull origins replenish the brain, revealing unexpected routes of brain macrophage renewal.

Integrated Brain-Body Neuroscience September 5-12, 2026   Director: Scott J. Russo Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA   Faculty: Jonathan Kipnis, Washington University School of Me...

A randomized trial provides direct human evidence that the placebo effect can shape humoral immunity, showing that reward-related brain activity correlates with vaccine-induced antibody production and opening new avenues for treating many medical conditions.

Particular Relevance to Sleep, Alzheimer's Disease and Immune Surveillance

This review by Kipnis et al. explores recent advances in brain fluid dynamics, emphasizing CSF flow’s role in waste clearance, the glymphatic and meningeal lymphatic systems, and neuroimmune interacti...

This review by Kipnis et al. explores recent advances in brain fluid dynamics, emphasizing CSF flow’s role in waste clearance, the glymphatic and meningeal lymphatic systems, and neuroimmune interactions, with implications for neurodegenerative and neuroimmune disorders.

The 2025 Booker shortlist is made up of works by veteran authors, many of whom have several books under their belts — and a couple that have been on this list before.

The authors developed an adeno-associated virus-based high-throughput in vivo CRISPR screening platform for endogenous mouse brain cell types. Using this platform, they define genes and pathways essen...

Dural mast cells control cerebrospinal fluid dynamics at critical brain-dura interfaces, specifically arachnoid cuff exit points. Their activation limits pathogen brain entry via histamine-induced vas...

The authors describe a mechanism for the clearance of macromolecules from cerebrospinal fluid in which macromolecules traverse from periarterial to perivenous spaces, at sites where intersecting lepto...

In this Perspective, Smyth and Kipnis reappraise the concept of immune privilege in the central nervous system. Although immune privilege was originally thought to involve isolation of the central ner...

Dysfunctional meningeal lymphatics interfere with the inhibitory synaptic inputs and disrupt excitatory/inhibitory balance on cortical neurons in a microglia-IL-6-dependent manner. Enhancing the funct...

Recent discoveries of glymphatics and meningeal lymphatics have redefined our understanding of CNS immunosurveillance. Kim and Kipnis illustrate how the clearance of brain-derived antigens creates an ...

Recent discoveries of glymphatics and meningeal lymphatics have redefined our understanding of CNS immunosurveillance. Kim and Kipnis illustrate how the clearance of brain-derived antigens creates an “immune code” that, when presented by meningeal antigen-presenting cells, instructs T cells to safeguard neural homeostasis. They review how inflammation, aging, and neurodegeneration disrupt this finely tuned process and highlight emerging therapeutic opportunities.

In this Perspective, Smyth and Kipnis reappraise the concept of immune privilege in the central nervous system. Although immune privilege was originally thought to involve isolation of the central ner...