Contact information
01865 272171
Research groups
Colleges
Latest Features
'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:
The second PhD student of the Domingos lab to graduate, Ines Mahu, has been featured in Cell Metabolism:
Ana Domingos
Professor of Neuroscience
- Tutor of Medicine at Lady Margaret Hall
- OUI Innovation Champion
The Domingos laboratory researches neuroimmune mechanisms underlying obesity. They discovered neuro-adipose junctions, between white adipocytes and sympathetic neurons, that are necessary and sufficient for fat mass reduction via norepinephrine (NE) signalling. Moreover, they discovered Sympathetic neuron-Associated Macrophages (SAMs) that import and metabolize NE. Abrogation of SAM function promotes long-term amelioration of obesity independently of food intake. These findings inspired the development of a new class of anti-obesity compounds named sympathofacilitators, which do not enter the brain, nor have the typical cardiovascular side effects of centrally acting sympathomimetic drugs. Sympathofacilitator drugs act as an energy sink by coupling thermogenesis to active heat dissipation. Ana Domingos is a member of the advisory board of Cell Metabolism and her lab has been funded by HHMI, Wellcome Trust, ERC, HFSP, EMBO, among others.
Speaking at
GRC, "Neuroimmunology in Organismic Function: Shared Mechanisms and Reciprocal Interactions", California, USA, Postponed.
GRC, "Gordon Research Conference: Immune System in Health, Disease and Therapy", Castelldefels, Spain, Postponed.
Keystone Symposia, "Adipose Tissue: Energizing Good Fat / Bioenergetics in Health and Diseases", January 15-20 2023, Keystone, Colorado, USA.
Organisation of conferences
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.
Past Meetings
BDI - MDO 2022, "Metabolic Diseases; Breakthrough Discoveries in Diabetes & Obesity", October 23-26 2022.
Neuroimmunometabolism, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Brain and Body Seminar series, October 5 2022.
Sidra Medicine's Precision Medicine and Functional Genomics 2022, "Neuroimmunometabolism", September 25 2022.
Complement UK, "Novel Mechanisms, Tools, and Therapies in Neuroinflammation", September 8-9 2022, King's College London.
Cell Symposia, "Translational Immunometabolism", June 26-28 2022, Basel, Switzerland.
EMBO|FEBS Lecture Course, "Molecular mechanisms of interorgan crosstalk in health and disease", May 19-27 2022, Spetses, Greece.
Cell Symposia, "Metabolites in Signaling and Disease", April 3-5 2022, Lisbon, Portugal.
EMNO | EMBL Symposium, Inter-organ communication in physiology and disease, March 21-23 2022, online.
GRK1957, 3rd Adipocyte-Brain Crosstalk Symposium, March 10-11 2022, online. Keynote Lecture.
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard's 31st Center for the Study of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (CSIBD) Workshop and 2nd Broad Immunology Symposium, November 18 and November 19 2021
Nature Conference, “Metabolism in Health and Disease”, organised by Nature Cell Biology, Nature Metabolism and Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, June 28-30, 2021.
Abcam Conference, "Immunometabolism: Fundamentals to Prospective New Therapies," June 8, 2021. Talk title "Sympathetic Neuroimmunometabolism" View full programme.
Keystone eSymposia, Single Cell Biology, Wednesday 17 March 2021. Download the eSymposia program or view online here.
Keystone Symposia, Obesity: From Cell to Patient, February 1 -3 2021. See programme here.
Keystone Symposia, Integrating Metabolism and Immunity, January 25 - 28 2021. See programme here.
MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences, Inter-organ Communication in Health and Disease Virtual Symposium, November 24 2020
Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center Seminars at Columbia University, “Sympathetic Neuroimmunity in Obesity”, November 12 2020
Cell Symposia, Metabolites in Signalling and Disease, Lisbon, Portugal, October 25 - 27 2020
American Diabetes Association, 80th Scientific Sessions (#ADA2020), Virtual Meeting "Immunity, Metabolism, and Diabetes", June 13 2020 5pm
Neuroscience School of Advanced Studies (NSAS), Neuroscience of Obesity, Venice, Italy, June 6 - 13 2020
Gastronauts Zoom-side Chat: Why we self medicate, Virtual Meeting, Tuesday 7 April 2020
Nature Conferences, Advances in Metabolic Communication, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, October 15 - 18 2019
Cell Symposia, Neuro-Immune Axis: Reciprocal Regulation in Development, Health and Disease, Long Beach, California, September 22-24 2019
ICMS, 14th World Congress on Inflammation (WCI2019), Sydney, September 15-19 2019. Plenary speakers included Janelle Ayres (The Salk Institute), Daniel Cua (Merck), Vishva M. Dixit (Genentech, Inc.), Florent Ginhoux (Singapore Immunology Network), Elaine Holmes (Imperial College London), Paul Kubes (University of Calgary), Luke O'Neill (Trinity College Dubin), Michal Schwartz (Weizmann Institute of Science) and Carola Vinuesa (Australian National University)
Aegean Conferences, 4th International Conference on ImmunoMetabolism: Molecular and Cellular Immunology of Metabolism, Rhodes, Greece May 28 - June 2 2019
EMBO Workshop, Organ crosstalk in energy balance and metabolic disease, Sancti Petri, Chiclana, Cádiz, Spain, April 8-11 2019
Type 2 Immunity in Homeostasis and Disease - 21-22 February 2019
Key publications
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Journal article
O'Brien CJO. and Domingos A., (2021), Science, 373, 24 - 25
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Brain-sparing sympathofacilitators mitigate obesity without adverse cardiovascular effects
Journal article
DOMINGOS ANA. and mahu I., (2020), Cell Metabolism
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Journal article
Sarker G. et al, (2020), Nat Immunol
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Journal article
Larabee CM. et al, (2019), Nature Reviews Endocrinology
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Journal article
Domingos AI., (2019), Nature Reviews Immunology
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Journal article
Berger JM. et al, (2019), Cell Metab, 30, 890 - 902.e8
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Journal article
Pirzgalska RM. et al, (2017), Nat Med, 23, 1309 - 1318
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Journal article
Chaudhury D. et al, (2013), Nature, 493, 532 - 536