The main focus of my lab is the study of the biological processes associated with multiple sclerosis. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the central nervous system (CNS) characterized by the loss of the myelin sheath surrounding the axons leading to alterations of the action potential propagation. It is presumably an autoimmune disease, as MS lesions present immune cell infiltration and the animal model of disease, the experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), is induced by immunization with myelin antigens. This leads to the activation of encephalitogenic T lymphocytes that enter the CNS, attack the myelin-forming cells (the oligodendrocytes) and start an inflammatory reaction that is amplified by CNS resident cells as the astrocytes and the microglia and by infiltrating immune cells. The currently used therapeutics for MS patients are immunosuppressive and immunomodulatory drugs, indicating that peripheral processes sustain disease. Thus, both central and peripheral events are involved in MS and need to be investigated. My scientific activity has been and is currently driven by a translational approach. Taking the moves from clinical observations and from human samples (blood or cerebral tissue), my research explores the activity of immune/glial/neuronal cells in vitro, sums up the high-throughput generated data with systems biology approaches, goes to the in vivo mouse models, until it is ready to go back to the clinic via the identification of novel diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers and the proposition of new therapeutic targets and approaches.