Laura Dearden

I can’t be at #ssib2025 this year but the amazing Rosanne and L are there to present their data on the impact of maternal obesity/GDM on offspring hypothalamic development, and what metformin use in pregnancy does to the fetal brain.

🏆 CONGRATULATIONS to Jo Lewis, 2025 winner of the Michael Harbuz Prize!

Jo will speak at #BSNBradford2025 on Glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide regulates food intake and body weight via the area postrema in mice.

Register: bsnbradford2025.oa-e...

Professor Susan Ozanne FMedSci next to a quote that reads: "The first 1,000 days, including time in the womb, represent an important window of opportunity to set children on a healthy trajectory for life. This isn’t about individual willpower or blaming and shaming – it's about creating an environment for parents, carers and their children that supports healthy development from the very beginning."

The report calls for urgent action to:

🤰 Prioritise support during pregnancy
🍴 Ensure robust regulation of the food industry
🤝 Coordinate across govt departments i.e. food, education, urban planning and transport

Child’s weight for life shaped by first 1,000 days, report health experts

🚨 Childhood obesity is rising at alarming rates around the world

Our latest report, with Italy’s Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, calls for early intervention to ensure healthier futures for all children 🌱

Read the report: bit.ly/46qy7tN

And see our key takeaways 🧵

We've got something NEW for BSN ECRs!

🔬📹An Early Career Methodology video tutorial series

Our first tutorial is an Introduction to single-cell transcriptomics by Dr Sreekala Nampoothiri.

Watch: my.neuroendo.org.uk/...

Not a BSN member? Join today and get access: www.neuroendo.org.uk...

A food-sensitive olfactory circuit drives anticipatory satiety - Nature Metabolism The authors describe a sensory circuit involving the medial septum (MS), where MS glutamatergic neurons integrate food odours to prime satiety and regulate nutrient intake.

🧠🍽️ A "hunger switch" in the nose? Smelling food activates a pathway from the olfactory bulb to medial septum glutamatergic neurons in mice, triggering anticipatory satiety: making them feel full before eating.
This circuit works in lean mice but is disrupted in obesity.

#neuroskyence 🧪

🎉 Thrilled to share my postdoc work, with our preprint out now on BiorXiv here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We investigated how the juvenile brain develops the ability to carry out care behaviours towards neonates by an exciting and surprising switch in neural activity and behaviour

Our latest review on perimenopause menopause and hormone therapy. What key issues have we missed and how can we do better from education to research to clinical care. With Laura Gravelsins! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Maternal iron deficiency causes male-to-female sex reversal in mouse embryos Nature - Iron-deficient conditions in pregnant mice can cause XY mouse embryos to develop female rather than male genitalia, revealing that iron metabolism has a role in determining male sex in mice.

Very cool paper connecting nutrition, epigenetics and developmental biology. rdcu.be/eptl7

Stoked to share our new review on why neuroendocrinology needs a systems lens and why hormones should matter to systems neuroscience. It’s time for serious cross-talk!

Translational Immunology - Careers Becoming a Scientist

It was fantastic to have @labliston.bsky.social give a talk at the @mrc-mbu.bsky.social on building a positive research culture. Valuable for all investigators/group leaders regardless of career stage, check out the resources below:
listonlab.uk/careers/

Scarce and unpredictable, yet obesogenic: modeling the impact of food insecurity on adiposity in mice Click on the article title to read more.

Food insecurity drives obesity and adiposity, but how is unclear.
A recent study by @clemmensenc.bsky.social developed a mouse model for this phenomenon lnkd.in/d8pEp2qv
Happy to share a commentary written with @johnspeakman4.bsky.social with our take on that study
doi.org/10.1002/oby....

I'm sure he would have had something to say, but maybe he already predicted this future in the books... narcissism of Vetinari and ignorance of Lord Rust...

That I would like to see!

Two pics from cycling around Cambridge this week. I really want to know what animal is being transported around in that basket!

Memories of a cold place trigger bodily responses to warm up Neurons involved in forming memories of a cold environment communicate with the part of the brain that regulates metabolic responses to cold stress.

Neurons involved in forming memories of a cold environment communicate with the part of the brain that regulates metabolic responses to cold stress

https://go.nature.com/4lP2EHa

NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women The Women’s Health Initiative has produced numerous influential findings

NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women

www.science.org/content/arti...

Letter_to_CongressApril16_2025_updated April 16, 2025 (updated 4/21/2025) Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions House Committee on Energy and Commerce - Subcommittee on Health Washington, DC 20510 Report: Scientists...

The report with the underlying data for the Washington Post story about firings of disproportionate numbers of women and underrepresented minorities from NIH Boards of Scientific Counselors.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

What a terrible loss to the field of obesity research and global health in general.

NIH PostBac program is open again! And I will be hiring! #JobPostComing

www.training.nih.gov/research-tra...

Glutamatergic argonaute2 promotes the formation of the neurovascular unit in mice Neurovascular unit formation is mediated by Ago2-dependent repression of PTEN in excitatory neurons.

Very cool new paper showing that Ago2 gene in glutamatergic neurons is critical for the formation of cerebral blood vessels in the developing mouse brain 🤩 #cerebrovascular

Biggest commitment to a 3 second joke I've ever seen

If you want to learn more about MESSAGE and how to get involved in our work, you can follow us here @messagetgi.bsky.social , and on our website www.messageproject.co.uk

How does the brain work?

Scientists are closer to the answer with the largest wiring diagram and functional map of a mammalian brain to date. 🧵

🧠📈

What does a scientist look like? Children are drawing women more than ever before Study is based on 20,860 sketches drawn by children over 5 decades

More children are drawing women scientists than ever before. Good! Although these children also assume a level of PPE that is not common among most scientists I know! www.science.org/content/arti...

There are fewer than 10 documented genetic causes of Transient Neonatal Diabetes (TNDM) and now PAX4 is one of them! Really proud of this collaborative work done between the Neonatal Diabetes Research Team at Exeter and the Translational Genomics of Diabetes Lab in Stanford.

The two most powerful Republican politicians in America - the president and co-president of the United States - are publicly praising and defending and excusing the crimes of a far-right foreign politician who leads a party founded by a Holocaust-denying neo-Nazi.

We are in a very, very dark place.