Co-Director of the Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, Associate Director of the Center for Metabolic Origins of Disease, and Professor, Medicine and Biological Chemistry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Post-doctoral opportunities
Two fully funded post-doctoral research positions are available in the laboratory of Dr. Nagy in the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research.
More information about requirements is available here. For more information or to apply, please contact Dr. Nagy at lnagy@jhmi.edu with a CV and names of three references.
Education
- M.D., University Medical School of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary, 1991
- Ph.D., University Medical School of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary, 1995
Overview
Dr. Nagy is a professor of medicine in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism in the Department of Medicine and biological chemistry at the Department of Biological Chemistry in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the associate director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Metabolic Origins of Disease, a program that spans Johns Hopkins Medicine campuses in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Baltimore. He is also co-director of the Johns Hopkins All Children's Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research. He has training as both a physician and as a molecular and cellular biologist.
Dr. Nagy’s research focuses on identifying and understanding how the identity of cells develops and how their differentiation contributes to human diseases. He seeks to understand how the extra- and intracellular lipid environment contributes to cellular development and differentiation, and what impact that has on components of the immune system. In this context, Dr. Nagy also studies what causes cells to use certain pieces of genetic information and not others, and what causes that process to sometimes result in diseases such as chronic inflammation, tissue degeneration or cancer. Studying these questions while evaluating the entire genome makes it more likely to discover key changes related to a particular disease and to find reliable biomarkers to monitor that disease. Those answers may lead to better diagnoses and novel therapies.
Honors and Awards
Dr. Nagy is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Boehringer Ingelheim Research Award, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship in Biomedical Sciences, and three consecutive Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Research Scholar Awards.
He is an elected member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), Academia Europaea and The Henry Kunkel Society.
Read more about Dr. Nagy's work:
Laszlo Nagy, M.D., Ph.D., and his team set out to discover how the body signals macrophages, which are white blood cells that play a key role in defending against disease.
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Researchers at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital identified a pathway that plays an integral role in the way the body repairs itself after sustaining muscle damage.
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Dr. Nagy’s research focuses on identifying ways to help tissue heal and regenerate. It’s research that could one day help to improve the quality of life for children with chronic inflammatory conditions.
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Research Interests
Dr. Nagy's research interests include:
- Transcriptional regulation via lipid activated transcription factors
- Nuclear receptor regulation of organ homeostasis and metabolism
- Epigenomic and transcriptional regulation of cell type specification
- Epigenomic regulation of macrophage differentiation and function in injury and tissue repair
- Molecular and cellular interactions during muscle regeneration in health and disease
Select Publications
- Patsalos A, Tzerpos P, Halasz L, Nagy G, Pap A, Giannakis N, Lyroni K, Koliaraki V, Pintye E, Dezso B, Kollias G, Spilianakis CG, Nagy L. The BACH1-HMOX1 Regulatory Axis Is Indispensable for Proper Macrophage Subtype Specification and Skeletal Muscle Regeneration. J Immunol. 2019 Sep 15;203(6):1532-1547.—VIDEO ABSTRACT
- Giannakis N, Sansbury BE, Patsalos A, Hays TT, Riley CO, Han X, Spite M, Nagy L. Dynamic changes to lipid mediators support transitions among macrophage subtypes during muscle regeneration. Nat Immunol. 2019 Apr 1. (Epub ahead of print)—VIDEO ABSTRACT
- Daniel B, Nagy G, Czimmerer Z, Horvath A, Hammers DW, Cuaranta-Monroy I, Poliska S, Tzerpos P, Kolostyak Z, Hays TT, Patsalos A, Houtman R, Sauer S, Francois-Deleuze J, Rastinejad F, Balint BL, Sweeney HL, Nagy L. The nuclear receptor PPARγ controls progressive macrophage polarization as a ligand-insensitive epigenomic ratchet of transcriptional memory. Immunity. 2018 Oct 16;49(4):615-626. PMCID: PMC6197058—VIDEO ABSTRACT
- Czimmerer Z, Daniel B, Horvath A, Rückerl D, Nagy G, Kiss M, Peloquin M, Budai MM, Cuaranta-Monroy I, Simandi Z, Steiner L, Nagy B Jr, Poliska S, Banko C, Bacso Z, Schulman IG, Sauer S, Deleuze JF, Allen JE, Benko S, Nagy L. The Transcription Factor STAT6 Mediates Direct Repression of Inflammatory Enhancers and Limits Activation of Alternatively Polarized Macrophages. Immunity. 2018 Jan 16;48(1):75-90.e6. PMCID: PMC5772169—VIDEO ABSTRACT
- Simandi Z, Horvath A, Wright LC, Cuaranta-Monroy I, De Luca I, Karolyi K, Sauer S, Deleuze JF, Gudas LJ, Cowley SM, Nagy L. OCT4 acts as an integrator of pluripotency and signal-induced differentiation. Mol Cell. 2016 Aug 18;63(4):647-661.
- Varga T, Mounier R, Patsalos A, Gogolák P, Peloquin M, Horvath A, Pap A, Daniel B, Nagy G, Pintye E, Póliska S, Cuvellier S, Larbi SB, Sansbury BE, Spite M, Brown CW, Chazaud B, Nagy L. Macrophage PPARγ, a lipid activated transcription factor controls the growth factor GDF3 and skeletal muscle regeneration. Immunity. 2016 Nov 15;45(5):1038-1051. PMCID: PMC5142832
Publication Links
PubMed
Google Scholar
Andreas Patsalos, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Researcher
Patsalos is a postdoctoral fellow in the Nagy Lab at the Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research (Johns Hopkins University, Departments of Medicine and Biological Chemistry). He obtained his bachelor’s degree in biology, and his master’s degree in the molecular basis of human disease from the University of Crete, Greece. During his Ph.D. at the University of Debrecen, Hungary, he investigated the role and contribution of myeloid cells to skeletal muscle injury and regeneration, and revealed novel pathways involved in tissue repair. He now seeks to investigate whether any of these pathways could be manipulated in vivo to restore proper muscle regeneration and repair in disease states (i.e. Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy), using genome-wide analyses, and disease relevant pre-clinical experimental model systems.
Email:
apatsalos@jhmi.edu
Twitter:
@anpatsalos
Laszlo Halasz, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Researcher
Xiaoyan Wei, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Researcher
Xiaoyan Wei is a postdoctoral researcher in the Nagy Lab at the Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research at Johns Hopkins University, Departments of Medicine and Biological Chemistry. She received her bachelor’s degree in life science from Henan Normal University in China, followed by a master’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from Beijing Normal University in China. During her Ph.D. at the Max Planck Research Institute of Molecular Genetics/Free University of Berlin, Germany, she investigated the myopathies caused by a genetic disorder named Neurofibromatosis type 1, and revealed a cell autonomous requirement of neurofibromin I for postnatal muscle hypertrophic growth and metabolic homeostasis and the myopathy is caused by premature myogenic progenitor quiescence and can be rescued by Notch pathway inhibition. She now seeks to investigate molecular pathways in regulating skeletal muscle regeneration and related disease with mouse models and unbiased genome wide analysis.
Email:
xwei23@jhmi.edu
Wilhelm Kristian Berger, B.S. Research Specialist
Berger received his Bachelor of Science degree in biomedical sciences from the University of Central Florida in 2018. He joined the lab of Dr. Laszlo Nagy at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in Orlando as a research intern in his final undergraduate year. During his internship he worked on macrophage function during muscle regeneration in response to acute injury. After graduation, Berger was hired as a research technologist by Dr. Nagy’s lab, now at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His main research interest is to determine how macrophages regulate the tissue repair processes in vivo using genomic, epigenomic, and single cell approaches.
Email: wkristianberger@jhmi.edu
Tatiana Sieler, B.S. Research Technician
Lab Alumni
Miguel Medina-Serpas, B.S. Research Specialist
Medina-Serpas worked on projects focused on better understanding the molecular and cellular interactions that regulate skeletal muscle regeneration in both healthy and diseased models. He is especially interested in the contribution of the innate immune compartment, namely the macrophage, in facilitating this process. Medina-Serpas received his Bachelor of Science degree in biomedical sciences from the University of Central Florida and is currently applying to graduate schools in pursuit of a Ph.D.