Lectures and seminars StratNeuro Seminar: "Sympathetic circuits in Obesity"
Welcome to the next StratNeuro Seminar with Professor Ana Domingos from the University of Oxford. The seminar will take place on Wednesday, August 26th, at 14:00 in Ragnar Granit (Biomedicum, Campus Solna).
Title: "Sympathetic circuits in Obesity"
About the speaker
Ana Domingos, MD PhD, is a Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, where she investigates the neural mechanisms that regulate obesity, with a particular focus on sympathetic neural circuits controlling metabolism. She graduated in Mathematics and Medicine, and she completed her PhD with Leslie Vosshall and postdoctoral training with Jeffrey Friedman, both at Rockefeller University, studying sensory and metabolic control of feeding.
Her laboratory has made pioneering contributions to the neurobiology of adipose tissue, including the identification of sympathetic neurons as key regulators of fat burning and components of the leptin negative feedback circuit (Cell, 2015). Her team has since uncovered mechanisms by which sympathetic neurons, immune cells, and stromal cells coordinate adipose tissue function, revealing sympathetic neuron-associated macrophages (Nature Medicine, 2017), stromal–ILC2 interactions (Nature, 2021), leptin-sensing perineurial cells (Immunity, 2023, Nature Metabolism 2026), and how sympathetic-derived neuropeptide Y signaling controls thermogenic adipocyte progenitors (Nature, 2024). Her group also established the concept of peripherally acting "sympathofacilitator" drugs that promote energy expenditure without cardiac or central nervous system side effects (Cell Metabolism, 2020).
Ana Domingos is an EMBO Member, Editor-in-Chief of AJP-Endocrinology and Metabolism, and is on the advisory board of Cell Metabolism. She has received numerous awards, including ERC Consolidator and Advanced Grants, a Wellcome Discovery Award, Human Frontiers Science program award, and the HHMI–Wellcome International Research Scholar Award.