Lab News
2025
Welcome New Lab Members
August 1st
– In the last few months, a number of new faces have joined the de Lartigue lab. Gabriel Tofani joined us as a postdoctoral researcher whose research focuses on microbiota and circadian rhythms. Jasmine Shakir, who rotated through the de Lartigue lab earlier in the year, decided to join us for her PhD studies. And we welcomed Dr Hongdong Song, a lecturer at the University of Shanghai for a 1-year sabbatical.
Winning SSIB Poster
July 28th
– Congratulations to rising star graduate student Isadora Braga on winning the Best Poster Presentation award at this year’s meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior in Oxford, UK. Her poster showcased her research on vagal remodeling in the pathogenesis of obesity.
New Study Published in JCI
April 17th
– Research led by postdoctoral researcher, Arashdeep Singh, was recently published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The study found that GLP-1 receptor agonists, a class of drugs currently used to treat type-2 diabetes and obesity, could be a promising therapeutic for managing the metabolic complications associated with Bardet-Biedl Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder characterized by early-onset obesity, compulsive eating, and cognitive impairments.
Congratulations Dr Yang!
April 10th
– Graduate student Mingxin Yang successfully defended her thesis and was awarded her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania this April. Especially impressive when you consider that she transferred to the UPenn program part-way through her studies. So well deserved…congrats Ming! And we are thrilled that she will be staying on in the lab as a postdoctoral researcher.
New Research Published
January 15th
– New research published by the de Lartigue lab identified, for the first time, the brain’s food-specific memory system and its direct role in overeating and diet-induced obesity.. Published in Nature Metabolism and culminating from the research of graduate student, Mingxin Yang, the study uncovers neurons in the hippocampus that encode memories of sugar and fat, shaping feeding behavior and metabolic health.
Rebeca awarded AHA fellowship
January 9th
– Congratulations to postdoctoral fellow Rebeca Mendez on being awarded the American Heart Association Postdoctoral fellowship for her project titled ‘Characterizing the role of nutrient-responsive neurons in the biological clock’.
2024
Another successful MSAP!
August 15th
– The 2024 Monell Science Apprenticeship Program finished with a Capstone Symposium highlighting the hard work of this year’s crop of SAPlings and their mentors. The de Lartigue lab’s apprentice, Mustafa Elabd, a rising senior from Julia R. Masterman school, took home an award for the best presentation – the second year in a row that a de Lartigue SAPling has achieved this success, this time under the mentorship of postdoc Rebeca Mendez! Come back and visit us Mustafa, your infectious positivity will be missed around the lab!
Welcome Avnika!
July 29th
– Avnika Bali has joined the lab as a postdoctoral researcher through a T32 Institutional Training Grant. Avnika completed her graduate research studies at Yale University in Dr Candice Paulsen’s lab studying molecular mechanisms of Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) ion channel regulation and disease pathogenesis.
Awards at SSIB
July 13th
– Congratulations to graduate student Mingxin Yang, who received an Elsevier Appetite New Investigator Travel Award to travel to this year’s Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior meeting in Chicago where she presented her research, ‘Identification of an appetitive engram in the hippocampus that controls food intake’.
– Also at this year’s SSIB meeting, Dr de Lartigue introduced his postdoctoral mentor Prof. Helen Raybould as she was presented with the Distinguished Career Award…congratulations Helen!
First Lab Wedding!
June 22nd
– One month after passing her qualifying exam, Isa married her fiancé Pablo, in a sweet ceremony here in Philly! Congratulations to the bride and groom!
Isa Passes Qualifying Exam!
May 22nd
– Isadora Braga is now officially a PhD candidate, having thoroughly impressed her examiners during her qualifying exam this week while discussing in depth her project on ‘The role of gut-brain signaling on the effectiveness of Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy’. Congratulations Isa – so well deserved!
Undergraduate Student Joins the Lab for the Summer
May 20th
– Duru Izzetoglu, a rising junior at Villanova University, has joined the lab for a couple of months over the summer. She’ll be learning neuroscience techniques and helping out around the lab. Welcome Duru, we’re glad to have you!
MSAP Students Accepted to Harvard and Columbia
May 20th
– Our MSAP (Monell Science Apprenticeship Program) students from last summer, Emmanuel Gitu and Mayssam Mohammed, graduate from high school this year and recently shared with us that they were accepted to Harvard and Columbia Universities, respectively, for their undergraduate studies. We wish them hearty congratulations on this success and all the very best in their future endeavors!
Graduate Research Fellowship
April 4th
– We are incredibly proud to announce that graduate student, Isadora Braga, has also been awarded a predoctoral fellowship. Isa was selected as a 2024 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow.
Predoctoral Fellowship
January 16th
– PhD student, Mingxin Yang, has been awarded an American Heart Association predoctoral fellowship for her project defining the role of a novel orexigenic population of hippocampal neurons in cardiometabolic disease.
Hot Off the Presses
January 18th
– New research from the de Lartigue lab is published in Cell Metabolism. Culminating from the doctoral research of past PhD student Molly McDougle, ‘Separate gut-brain circuits for fat and sugar reinforcement combine to promote overeating’ unravels the neural pathways of reward associated with fat and sugar consumption. Our study found that fats and sugars are sensed by discrete neurons of the vagus nerve and engage parallel but distinct reward circuits to control nutrient-specific reinforcement. We also found that when fat and sugar were combined, it had a synergistic effect, with significantly more dopamine release. Read it here.
2023
Visiting Student
November 13th
– Elena Kozlova, a neuroscience graduate student from the Curras-Collazo Research Group at UC Riverside visits the lab to learn nodose injections.
It’s Official
September 1st
– University of Pennsylvania neuroscience graduate student Isadora Braga has chosen the de Lartigue lab to complete her PhD studies. Welcome Isa, we’re so glad to ‘officially’ have you as part of the lab!
MSAP Success!
August 11th
– Mayssam Mohammed and Emmanuel Gitu, two Philadelphia high school students worked with us over the summer as part of the Monell Science Apprenticeship Program (MSAP), mentored by Arashdeep Singh and Alan de Araujo, respectively. Both did a fantastic job on their final presentations at the Capstone Symposium, with Mayssam taking home the award for the best presentation! Learn more about Monell’s MSAP program here.
Congratulations Dr McDougle!
August 1st
– Past PhD student Molly McDougle joins Linda Rinamen’s lab at Florida State University. She’ll be studying the role of GLP-1 in reward and stress.
Early Career Award
July 21st
– Dr Arashdeep Singh is awarded the National Dairy Council Early Career Investigator Research Award, in recognition of his scientific contributions to the understanding of dairy’s role in health. The award was presented at the American Society of Nutrition’s annual ‘Nutrition’ meeting in Boston.
Visiting Student
July 17th
– Wanqing Jiang, a PhD student in the lab of Stefan Trapp, PhD at University College London has is visiting the lab for 8 weeks to learn techniques to assist her in her PhD studies. While in the lab, Wanqing will be learning how to perform viral injections into nodose ganglia of mice and chemogenetic stimulation in freely behaving mice to record feeding and reward behaviors. These skills will be used to further her own research project and foster our collaboration with the Trapp lab.
Alan N. Epstein Research Award
July 15th
– Dr de Lartigue is awarded the Alan N. Epstein Research Award at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB). Professor Epstein was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, a distinguished researcher in the field of ingestive behavior and a President of SSIB. The award, endowed by his family in his name, honors a researcher for a ‘specific research discovery that has advanced the understanding of ingestive behavior’. The award was presented at the SSIB annual meeting in Portland, Oregon
Research Published
June 26th
– Dr de Lartigue is a co-author on a new article published in Molecular Metabolism. ‘The gut-brain axis mediates bacterial driven modulation of reward signaling’ by Kim, et al. demonstrates that high fat-type microbiota can alter feeding behavior and modulate reward via the vagus nerve. Read it here.
RSA Meeting Presentation
June 24th
– Dr de Lartigue is a co-author on a new article published in Molecular Metabolism. ‘The gut-brain axis mediates bacterial driven modulation of reward signaling’ by Kim, et al. demonstrates that high fat-type microbiota can alter feeding behavior and modulate reward via the vagus nerve. Read it here.Graduate student Mingxin Yang was awarded a Doctoral Student Small Grant from the Research Society on Alcohol (RSA) in 2022 for her project ‘Elucidating the Role of Ethanol-Responsive Vagal Neurons in Ethanol Intake And Reward’. This summer she was invited to present her research at the 46th annual RSA meeting in Bellevue, Washington.
New Faces
June 1st
– Welcome to Dr Myunghwan (Mark) Choi, Associate Professor at Seoul National University, who joins the lab as a visiting scientist. Dr Choi’s lab studies how taste information is passed from the tongue to the brain and how this influences feeding behavior.
– And to Jane de Lartigue, PhD, who joins us as our new lab manager!
New Lab Member
May 16th
– New postdoc Rebeca Mendez-Hernandez joins the lab! Having completed her PhD at the National Autonomous University of Mexico studying how the brain regulates metabolism in a circadian context, Rebeca will be examining the daily rhythms in the sensing of meal-related signals by the vagus nerve and how the disruption of dialy cycles alters gut-brain communication.
AHA Fellowship
March 1st
– Dr Arashdeep Singh was awarded a 2-year American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship in order to pursue research elucidating mechanisms for gut-brain circuits for fermentable fiber-induced satiety. He was also awarded an American Neurogastroenterology and Motility Society Discovery Grant for the project ‘Identifying downstream gut-brain mechanisms of prebiotic-mediated satiety to treat obesity’.
New Part-Time Lab Member
February 20th
– Hillary Ellis joins the de Lartigue lab as a part-time research technician. Hillary will split her time between the de Lartigue lab and the Tordoff lab here at Monell.
PA Tobacco Formula Grant
January 1st
– Dr Alan Moreira de Araujo was awarded a 1-year PA Tobacco Formula Grant to pursue his research elucidating the role of vagal afferent neurons in the pathogenesis of metabolic-associated fatty liver disease.
2023
New Research Published
November 1st
– New research is published in Biological Psychiatry. authored by Dr Jean-Phillipe Krieger, with Drs de Lartigue and Singh among co-authors. The study finds that vagal sensory signals from the gastrointestinal tract are critical for baseline and feeding-induced tuning of anxiety via the central amygdala in rats. This suggests that vagal gut-brain signaling could be a target to normalize interoception in anxiety disorders. Read it here.
Best Paper Award
September 19th
– At the 2022 Europhysiology Meeting in Copenhagen, the Scandinavian Physiological Society presented the de Lartigue lab with an award for the best Acta Physiologica paper of 2021. The award comes with a $100,000 prize, split with a second award winner. The award-winning paper ‘Intact vagal gut-brain signaling prevents hyperphagia and excessive weight gain in response to high-fat high-sugar diet’ can be found here.
Visiting Scientist
September 1st
– Dr Vincent Paillé, research scientist at the French Institute for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment (INRAE) at the University of Nantes joins the lab as a visiting scientist. Vincent’s lab is studying the impact of perinatal malnutrition on feeding behavior. He’ll be spending a year in the lab learning molecular and genetic techniques to study the gut-brain axis, including viral injections in the gut and nodose ganglia and the FosTRAP technique. We look forward to a productive mutual exchange of knowledge and insight.
We’ve Moved!
May 2nd
– The de Lartigue lab has officially moved from Gainesville to Philadelphia! Dr de Lartigue accepted a faculty position at Monell Chemical Senses Center, with an adjunct position at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
de Lartigue Lab 