For a long time, the brain was believed to be deprived of the peripheral immune cells due to the blood-brain barrier. In recent decades, studies have revealed that peripheral immune cells can enter the brain under certain circumstances.

We investigate how systemic inflammation affects neuroinflammation. Our main focus is to compare the phenotypes of brain-resident microglia to monocytes invading the brain under inflammatory conditions. A key question we try to answer is whether the functions of microglia and invading monocytes differ. To answer this question, we determine the functional profile of the cells by estimates from protein and mRNA expression levels. Using transcriptomics and proteomics, we examine this at the single-cell level.