'Mouse Brains Appear to Eavesdrop on Their Fat' (The Scientist, September 2022)

The paper, 'Brain-Sparing Sympathofacilitators Mitigate Obesity without Adverse Cardiovascular Effects' has been featured in:

• Alan Morris (2020): Unravelling novel weight loss mechanisms. Nature Reviews Endocrinology.
• Jung Dae Kim and Sabrina Diano (2020): A Sympathetic Treatment for Obesity. Cell Metabolism.

The paper, 'Sympathetic neuron-associated macrophages contribute to obesity by importing and metabolizing norepinephrine' has been featured in:

• Stefan Jung: Year in Review — Macrophages and monocytes in 2017: Macrophages and monocytes: of tortoises and hares. Nature Reviews Immunology 2017 
• Conor A. Bradley (2017). Specialized macrophages contribute to obesity. Nature Reviews Endocrinology. 
• Making Fat Mice Lean: Novel Immune Cells Control Neurons Responsible For Fat Breakdown. ScienMag. 
• Wei Wong (14 Nov 2017). Fat expansion through norepinephrine catabolism. Editor's Choice, Science Signalling.
• Seth Thomas Scanlon (17 Nov 2017), Unusual macrophages contribute to obesity. Editor's Choice, Science 
• Guttenplan, Kevin A. et al. (2018) Play It Again, SAM: Macrophages Control Peripheral Fat Metabolism, Trends in Immunology 
• Michael P Czech (7 Nov 2017), Macrophages dispose of catecholamines in adipose tissue. Nature Medicine

The paper, 'Sympathetic neuro-adipose connections mediate leptin-driven lipolysis' has been featured in:

• Johan Ruud & Jens Bruening (2015). Metabolism: Light on leptin link to lipolysis. Nature
• Natasha Bray (2015). Zapping fat in WAT, Nature Reviews Neuroscience
• News and Views (2015).  A closer look at the nerves that slim down your fat cells, Science
• Luis Varela, Tamas L. Horvath (2015). A Sympathetic View on Fat by Leptin, Cell
• Qingchun Tong (2015) Exceptional F1000 Physiology, Technical Advance
• Mark Bothwell (2015) Very Good F1000 Neuroscience, New Finding

The first PhD student of the Domingos lab to graduate, Roksana Pirzgalska, has been featured in:

• Meet Roksana Pirzgalska - NIU Best Thesis Award Winner 2020

The second PhD student of the Domingos lab to graduate, Ines Mahu, has been featured in Cell Metabolism:

• Voices: The Author's Journey - I, Too, Belong in Science!

Ana I. Domingos is a Professor of Neuroscience focused on exploring the neurobiological basis of obesity, with a particular interest in the role of sympathetic neural networks. Her lab is moved by the idea that it is possible to pharmacologically modulate sympathetic neural networks to mitigate obesity without intolerable side effects.

After studying undergraduate Mathematics in Lisbon and Paris, she was sponsored by the Gulbenkian PhD program to go to the Rockefeller University in New York City to study olfactory neuroscience with Leslie Vosshall (Neuron 2004, Current Biology 2005), Her postgraduate studies in sensory neuroscience were followed by postdoctoral work with Jeffrey Friedman. She then investigated how metabolic signals affect brain circuitry underlying sweetener preference and after-taste reward (Nature Neuroscience 2011, Molecular Metabolism 2013, eLife 2013). Her current research interests in sympathetic neurobiology started in her first laboratory at the Gulbenkian Institute four years before moving to Oxford in 2018.

The first discovery from Domingos laboratory was identifying sympathetic neurons in adipose tissue as crucial players in fat burning and as an efferent arm closing the leptin neuroendocrine loop of negative feedback axis (Cell, 2015). Using novel imaging techniques they proved the existence of these neurons, which had previously only been speculated to exist based on indirect evidence. Domingos lab demonstrated their role in reducing fat mass by using molecular genetic methods  (Cell, 2015; Nature Communications, 2017) .More recently, they revealed that sympathetic neuron-derived Neuropeptide Y protects against obesity by sustaining the proliferation of thermogenic adipocyte progenitors (Nature, 2024). On the translational front, the Domingos lab introduced the concept of "sympathofacilitator" drugs which do not enter the brain nor have the typical cardiovascular or behavioral side effects of centrally acting sympathomimetic drugs (Cell Metabolism, 2020). Domingos’ research also ventured into neuroimmunology, identifying novel cell populations interacting with sympathetic nerves. They identified sympathetic neuron-associated macrophages (SAMs) (Nature Medicine, 2017), which  are crucial in norepinephrine uptake and metabolism. They also contributed to unveiling the interactions between sympathetic nerves and stromal-ILC2 units (Nature, 2021) regulating adipose mass. Additionally, they identified leptin-sensing perineurial cells that defend thermogenesis through IL33 (Immunity, 2023). They have also performed related study investigating the role of these cells in integrating leptin with sympathetic outflow to protect against obesity (BioRxiv, 2024). Building on the discovery of SAMs, their exploration of adrenal-resident macrophages led to our discovery of "Big Autofluorescent Lipid-Laden" (BALL) macrophages, which regulate glucocorticoid production, specifically aldosterone (BioRxiv). Eliminating BALL macrophages protects against obesity-induced adrenal dysfunction, suggesting the potential for treating obesity-induced hypertension by antibody-mediated neutralization of BALL macrophages. Ana Domingos  has been a plenary speaker at international conferences and institutional events over 100 times in the last 10 years.

Ana Domingos is an EMBO member, a member of the advisory board of Cell Metabolism, a member of the board of reviewing editors of eLife, and the editor-in-chief of the AJP - Endocrinology and Metabolism, published by the American Physiological Society. Over the last ten years, her laboratory has been supported by the EMBO installation award (2014), the Human Frontiers Science Program Young Investigator Award (2015), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute – Welcome International Research Scholar Award (2017), the ERC-Consolidator Grant (2019), the Pfizer Aspire Obesity Award (2022), BBSRC, NIH-AMP-CMD, Wellcome Discovery Award (2026),  the ERC-Advanced Grant (2026), and funding from industry (Novo Nordisk). She is also a recipient of the Royal Society Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship, Royal Society International Exchange with China, and the Carl Ludwig Distinguished Lecture Award given by the Neural Control & Autonomic Regulation (NCAR) Section Of the American Physiological Society (2023).

Ana speaks at IMMUNOGLOBAL  talks

^{© Global Immunotalks}

2026: Keystone Immunometabolism Across Scales: From Cells to Systems to Healthspan, Vancouver | CSHL Asia meeting on Neuroimmunolgy in Health and Diseases, China | Cell Press Symposia  Immune Regulation of Organismal Homeostasis, China | XXII Institute of Biomedicine of Seville (IBiS) Researchers Forum -- Inter-organ communication | Diabetes UK Professional Conference 2026 Liverpool | Metabolic Physiology Meeting in 2026 – Hilton Head Island, SC, USA | Karolinska Institutet StratNeuro Retreat 2026 | 14th CONGRESS of the INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR AUTONOMIC NEUROSCIENCE – Bologna | Danish Diabetes and Endocrine Academy Summit, Kibæk, Denmark  | FEBS Adriatic School of Immunometabolism  | British Society for Immunology Congress 2026, Glasgow

2025: Keystone Symposia Neural-Immune Interactions: A Systems-Wide Perspective on Whole Organism Physiology, Whistler, BC, Canada | Key Opinion Leaders Thinktank Novo Nordisk and Lundbeck Foundation, Copenhagen  | 6th International Conference on ImmunoMetabolism , Crete | APS Summit, Baltimore | AMP CMD Parliament Meeting, Philadelphia | EMBO workshop From Cells to Organism Radstadt Salzburg | Fondation des Treilles workshop: Physiology of Inter-Organ Communication | Samsung Science and Technology Foundation (SSTF) Global Research Symposium (GRS) on the Science and Engineering of Brain-Body Interactions: From Cells to Interfaces, Stockholm | Cell Press Allen Neuroimmunity, NYC | NYC Langone Seminar Series | Tsinghua University Seminar Series, Beijing | Brain-Body Symposium, Bordeaux | Diabetex International Conference on “Cellular and Molecular Cross-talks in Diabetes, Paris | The National Academies’ Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders workshop Understanding Brain-Body Interactions to Advance Brain Health

2026: CSHL Asia meeting on Neuroimmunology in Health and Diseases, Suzhou, China

2022: Keystone Symposium “Neuroimmunometabolism"- Beaver Run Conference Center in Breckenridge, Colorado.

2021: 31^st ECRO meeting – Cascais, Portugal

2021: 7^th Annual Immunogenomics Conference, Hudsonalpha Institute of Biotechnology & Champalimaud Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal.

2018: 6^th Annual Immunogenomics Conference, Hudsonalpha Institute of Biotechnology & Science AAAS, Alabama, USA.

2017: Co-organizer, EMBO Immunology sectorial meeting – Paco de Arcos, Portugal

2016: EMBO Workshop on Neural Control of Feeding and Metabolism, Cascais, Portugal. Check out some pictures from the event.

2015: EMBO Obesity sectorial meeting – Cascais, Portugal