Aleksandra Deczkowska

It was my pleasure to visit you!

On the balance of knowledge - Nature Reviews Immunology Ruslan Medzhitov shares his thoughts on the balance between generating data and developing theories in immunology, with a focus on exploring the rules that govern complex systems.

"Explaining something with the wrong model can be worse than not explaining it at all."
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Scientific lectures: Morgane THION | Paris Brain Institute Speaker : Morgane THION, College de France"Microglia in the developing brain: from colonization to functions"

🎙️ Morgane THION, Collège de France, will talk about "microglia in the developing brain: from colonization to functions" on Monday, 9 February, at 11am at Paris Brain Institute.

👉 More information: https://parisbraininstitute.org/agenda/scientific-lectures-morgane-thion

What if the immune system held a key to brain health ? 🧠

Research by Aleksandra Deczkowska @adeczkowska.bsky.social at the Institut Pasteur shows constant immune–brain dialogue, and how modulating immunity could help prevent or treat neurological diseases.

Tumor-associated macrophages directly stimulate neurite outgrowth, revealing a dual role in enhancing intratumoral nerve growth and promoting neural repair after severe spinal cord injury @cp-immunity.bsky.social
www.cell.com/immunity/ful...

Why do so few cancer cells manage to form metastases - and what helps the rare ones succeed?

Delighted to share our first publication of 2026 🎉🎉, led by the outstanding @lbejarano.bsky.social 🤩, where we reveal some insights into this - focusing on brain metastasis 🧠🧪🔬

www.cell.com/cell-reports...

PhD students’ taste for risk mirrors their supervisors’ Nature - Learned risk-taking behaviours can persist for years after leaving the lab — and even after taking on a new research topic.

A researchers’ propensity for risky projects is passed down to their doctoral students — and stays with trainees after they leave the laboratory

go.nature.com/4qvaffO

Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance Scientists have long debated the origins of exceptional human achievements. This literature review summarizes recent evidence from multiple domains on the acquisition of world-class performance. We re...

Multidisciplinary training, over time, produces the highest impact people

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Streptomyces secretes a siderophore that sensitizes competitor bacteria to phage infection - Nature Microbiology A secondary metabolite sensitizes competitor Bacillus subtilis to a wide panel of lytic phages by sequestering iron and preventing the activation of Spo0A.

Microbes weaponizing secondary metabolites to make rivals vulnerable to phage attack 🧪🦠

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

PD-L2 Regulates Natural Antibody and IL-10 Secretion by B-1 cells B-1 cells are innate-like lymphocytes that play a critical role in homeostasis by secreting natural antibodies, typically IgM, and immunosuppressive molecules such as IL-10. However, the regulation of...

This #Preprint reports that B6 (but not wild mice) have a truncated PDL2, missing an active intracellular signalling domain:
"Surprisingly, in C57BL/6J (B6) mice PD-L2 has only a 5-amino acid intracellular domain, and the same is true for several other laboratory mouse strains"
#Immunology

When your PI presents your work

congratulations @dbikard.bsky.social !!! well deserved!

I am thrilled to share our latest work led by @zurisullivan.bsky.social in collaboration with @moffittlab.bsky.social ! We find that the brain encodes distinct, pathogen-specific sickness states across behavior, physiology, neural activity, and gene expression 1/6

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Come to be our colleague! Center of Paris, excellent facilities, research spanning the whole range of basic and biomedical life science topics, enthusiastic and collaborative colleagues, crème brûlée every Friday... What else could one want?

Creation of new junior research groups at the Institut Pasteur - Call for applications 2026 - Research The Institut Pasteur is launching an international call to recruit new junior research group leaders leveraging cutting-edge transdisciplinary approaches to exploring infectious diseases, host-microbe...

🔬 Call to create junior research groups at the Institut Pasteur

Focus: Infectious diseases, host-microbe interactions, vaccines
Special interest: AI methodologies

📅 Deadline: Feb 9, 2026
👥 2-12 years post-PhD

Apply now 📝 research.pasteur.fr/en/call/crea...

#JobOpportunity #Research

Oxidized phosphatidylcholines deposition drives chronic neurodegeneration in a mouse model of progressive multiple sclerosis via IL-1β signaling - Nature Neuroscience In this study, Yu et al. found that a positive feedback loop between oxidized phosphatidylcholine and IL-1β promotes chronic neurodegeneration in the central nervous system and could be a contributing...

Evidence continues building that oxidized lipids drive inflammasome activities in health and disease.  A beautiful study shows a link to multiple sclerosis, with a role for inflammasomes and IL-1 in pathology.  Kudos to the authors on this exciting discovery.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We would like to thank our amazing collaborators @nicogaudenzio.bsky.social Xinzhong Dong, Martin Hasselblatt and Friederike Jonsson, members of @aleksdelab.bsky.social and amazing platforms @institutpasteur.bsky.social - would not happen without You!

Overall, activation of CP mast cells or CPEC secretion in early life derails brain development; therefore the presence of mast cells at the neonatal CP is a “vulnerability”, this is how pathologies associated with mast cell activation in neonates may exert their long lasting effect on the brain.

Finally, using chemogenetics, we showed that triggering CPEC responses at birth leads to long-term cognitive alterations, highlighting the lasting impact of early-life immune activity at the brain’s borders

When we activated these neonatal mast cells, we saw a serotonin-dependent increase in CPEC secretion — along with CSF pollution by intracellular content.

These mast cells were present only at birth and showed a connective-tissue–type phenotype.

Next, to understand how immune cells shape CP function, we performed ligand–receptor analysis. This revealed that mast cells may directly interact with CP epithelial cells (CPECs) through serotonergic signaling.

Early-life stromal niches orchestrate B lymphopoiesis at the brain’s borders The dura mater serves as a critical immunological niche for the central nervous system, yet the mechanisms governing the emergence of this niche in early life remain understudied. Here, we chart the t...

This is consistent with another (very) recent preprint from @bethstevenslab.bsky.social lab: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... but some pro-B and pre-B cells are still present in adult CP!

By dissecting their subtypes, we discovered that these cells resemble developing B cells typically found in the bone marrow of adults.

One striking change was a surge of B cells around P15, prompting us to examine them more closely.

Using CITE-seq, we mapped the CP immune landscape across postnatal development and found that the CP is a highly dynamic niche with major shifts in immune cell composition.

We wanted to understand how immune cells shape brain maturation through the choroid plexus (CP), a brain border which produces the CSF, key for brain development, and is exposed to peripheral immune factors.

Local B cell maturation and mast cell regulation of choroid plexus function in early life. Postnatal development is a critical period for the maturation of the nervous and immune systems. The choroid plexus (CP) within the brain ventricles guides brain development through the production of ...

Excited to share our new preprint: “Local B cell maturation and mast cell regulation of choroid plexus function in early life” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... , initiated in the lab by Laetitia Travier and led by the one and only @fakesamir.bsky.social

These are the 10 art classroom rules of Corita Kent (artist, teacher, social justice advocate and nun). They are true for any creative process, especially Rule 8: DON’T TRY TO CREATE AND ANALYZE AT THE SAME TIME. THEY’RE DIFFERENT PROCESSES. (i.e. night science / day science).

Early-life stromal niches orchestrate B lymphopoiesis at the brain's borders https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.27.690844v1