'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 pioneered a new field of research coined Neuroimmunometabolism on which her lab authored  reviews (Nature Reviews Endocrinology 2020, Annual Review of Cell and Dev. Biol. 2021, Neuron 2022).. and organized conferences (Keystone Symposium 2022),). She organised conferences in metabolism (ECRO’21, EMBO’16) and has been a plenary speaker at international conferences and institutional events over 80 times in the last 10 years.

Ana Domingos is 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 Award (2019), the Pfizer Aspire Obesity Award (2022), BBSRC, NIH-AMP-CMD, and funding from industry (Novo Nordisk). She is a recipient of 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}

Cell Symposia, "Neurometabolism in health and disease", Singapore, April 26–28 2023. Submit abstract. Register now.

GRC Frontiers of Science, "Mechanisms that Underlie Flexible Neural Coding", Les Diablerets Conference Center, Eurotel Victoria, Les Diablerets, VD, Switzerland, May 21 - 26 2023. Apply now.

DNF Symposium 2023, "Multifaceted Brain Communication", The Department of Fundamental Neurosciences (DNF), UNIL, Lausanne, Switzerland, September 15 2023. Registration opens on May 1 2023.

Cell Symposia, "Molecular mechanisms and integrative physiology of obesity", Shanghai, China, October 13 - 15 2023. Submit abstract. Register now.

GRC, "Neuroimmunology in Organismic Function: Shared Mechanisms and Reciprocal Interactions", California, USA, Postponed.

Keystone Symposia - Neuroimmunometabolism - Obesity at the Crossroads between Neuroimmunity and Immunometabolism - Joint Meeting with Interconnection between the Gut, Brain and Microbiome for Metabolic Disease, October 07 - 10, 2022

ECRO- XXXI, 13-16 September 2021, Cascais, Portugal. View the Program on ECRO online.

EMBO Meeting - Neural control of metabolism and eating behaviour. Check out some pictures from the event.

Keystone Symposia, "Adipose Tissue: Energizing Good Fat / Bioenergetics in Health and Diseases", January 15-20 2023, Keystone, Colorado, USA.

BDI - MDO 2022, "Metabolic Diseases; Breakthrough Discoveries in Diabetes & Obesity", October 23-26 2022.

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