Summary
RESEARCH
I established my research group at Imperial College London in 2010. The group received funding from the Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust and Kidney Research UK. Our main interest in to understand genetic variation that controls macrophage function in complex inflammatory disorders. We use animal models of inflammatory kidney disease, wound healing/fibrosis, metabolic syndrome, bone inflammation and apply systems-genetics approaches to investigate the effect of germline sequence variation on macrophage plasticity. Our recent approaches pointed towards the importance of targeting macrophage energy metabolism in inflammatory and fibrotic disease.
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COLLABORATIONS
Our main external collaborators are Dr Enrico Petretto at Duke-NUS, Singapore (https://www.duke-nus.edu.sg/content/petretto-enrico); Dr Christian Frezza at the MRC Cancer Unit, University of Cambridge (https://www.mrc-cu.cam.ac.uk/research/Christian-frezza-folder).
SELECTED RECENT PUBLICATIONS (2017-2020)
2020 Pereira M, Ko JH, Logan J, Protheroe H, Kim KB, Tan ALM, Park KS, Rotival M, Petretto E, Bassett JHD, Williams GR, and Behmoaras J. A trans-eQTL network regulates osteoclast multinucleation and bone mass. Elife. 2020 Jun 19;9:e55549. doi: 10.7554/eLife.55549.
2019 Pereira M, Chen TD, Buang N, Olona A, Ko JH, Prendecki M, Costa ASH, Nikitopoulou E, Tronci L, Pusey CD, Cook HT, McAdoo SP, Frezza C and Behmoaras J. Acute iron deprivation reprograms human macrophage metabolism and reduces inflammation in vivo. Cell Reports. 2019 Jul 9;28(2):498-511.
2019 Bagnati M, Moreno-Moral A, Ko JH, Nicod J, Harmston N, Imprialou M, Game L, Gil J, Petretto E and Behmoaras J. Systems genetics identifies a macrophage cholesterol network associated with physiological wound healing. JCI Insight. 2019 Jan 24;4(2)
2018 Olona A, Terra X, Ko, JH, Grau-Bové C, Pinent M, Ardevol A, Garcia Diaz A, Moreno-Moral A, Edin, M, Bishop-Bailey D, Zeldin DC, Aitman TJ, Petretto E, Blay M and Behmoaras J. Epoxygenase inactivation exacerbates diet and aging-associated metabolic dysfunction resulting from impaired adipogenesis. Mol Metab, 2018 May;11:18-32
2018 Moreno-Moral A, Bagnati B, Koturan S, Ko, JH, Fonseca C, Harmston N, Game L, Martin J, Ong V, Abraham DJ, Denton CP, Behmoaras J, and Petretto E. Changes in macrophage transcriptome associate with systemic sclerosis and mediate GSDMA contribution to disease risk. Ann Rheum Dis, 2018 Apr;77(4):596-601.
2017 Papathanassiu A, Ko JH, Imprialou M, Bagnati M, Srivastava PK, Vu HA, Cucchi D, McAdoo SP, Ananieva EA, Mauro C and Behmoaras J. BCAT1 controls metabolic reprogramming in activated human macrophages and is associated with inflammatory diseases. Nat Commun, 2017 Jul 12;8:16040.
Publications
Journals
Chen H, You R, Guo J, et al., 2024, WWP2 Regulates Kidney Fibrosis and the Metabolic Reprogramming of Profibrotic Myofibroblasts., J Am Soc Nephrol
Ouyang JF, Mishra K, Xie Y, et al., 2023, Systems level identification of a matrisome-associated macrophage polarisation state in multi-organ fibrosis., Elife, Vol:12
Ahmadzadeh K, Pereira M, Vanoppen M, et al., 2023, Multinucleation resets human macrophages for specialized functions at the expense of their identity (vol 24, e56310, 2023), Embo Reports, Vol:24, ISSN:1469-221X
Behmoaras J, 2023, Multinucleation resets human macrophages for specialized functions at the expense of their identity, Embo Reports, Vol:24, ISSN:1469-221X, Pages:1-19
Chen H, Chew G, Devapragash N, et al., 2022, The E3 ubiquitin ligase WWP2 regulates pro-fibrogenic monocyte infiltration and activity in heart fibrosis, Nature Communications, Vol:13, ISSN:2041-1723