Fellow and Tutor in Medicine Professor Ana Domingos has received a Wellcome Discovery Award. The Wellcome Discovery Award scheme recognises established researchers, enabling them to pursue bold and creative research programs that are expected to deliver pathbreaking insights into our understanding of improved human life, health and wellbeing.
This award will fund research focused on understanding those neurons outside the brain that control body weight by burning fat. These neurons are autonomic sympathetic neurons, which receive signals from the brain to control various bodily functions, including fat burning. Older fat-burning anti-obesity medications, though effective, were removed from the market due to significant cardiovascular risks and potential for abuse. These drugs acted on the brain, stimulating sympathetic neurons broadly, including those involved in cardiovascular control. As a result, modern weight-loss treatments have shifted toward appetite suppression, targeting neurons the brain. However, reducing food intake lowers basal metabolic rate (and fat burning), which favours weight regain.
The goal of Professor Domingos’ research is to identify and selectively target neurons that decouple fat burning from cardiovascular control. The award will fund new discovery platforms developed in Professor Domingos' lab, which allow the study of these neurons at the molecular level.
Through her research, Professor Domingos aims to provide foundational knowledge that could pave the way for new treatments to complement existing appetite suppressants, helping people lose weight by burning fat while avoiding cardiovascular side effects. Ultimately, this foundational work could lead to safer, more sustainable, and cost-effective obesity management solutions, improving public health and reducing the burden of obesity-related diseases.
Of the potential impact of her research, Professor Domingos says, "The potential for discovery using my laboratory’s platforms could revolutionise our understanding of both autonomic neuroscience and metabolism. The prospect of identifying fat-burning, druggable targets is truly exhilarating!"
