Dr Sarah Dimeloe PhD

Sarah Dimeloe

Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy
Department of Metabolism and Systems Science
Associate Professor

Contact details

Address
Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy
College of Medicine and Health
IBR, University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
Sarah Dimeloe

Sarah Dimeloe is an Associate Professor working across the Departments of Immunology and Immunotherapy, and Metabolism and Systems Science.

Research in Sarah’s lab is focused on the metabolism of immune cells and how this underpins their role in health and disease.


Qualifications

  • PhD Immunology, 2012
  • MSc Immunology, 2008
  • MPharm Pharmacy, 2004

Biography

Ask a researcher: Myeloma!

Sarah Dimeloe qualified with an MPharm (Hons) from the University of Nottingham in 2004. She completed her professional training as a pharmacist at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and a PhD in Immunology at King’s College London.

In 2012 Sarah moved to the University of Basel in Switzerland to undertake post-doctoral research in the laboratory of Professor Christoph Hess. Here, Sarah began to investigate metabolic activity in T cells and how that relates to their important roles in health and disease. 

In 2017 Sarah was awarded a Birmingham Fellowship to establish her own research group at the University of Birmingham. Her research has subsequently been supported by a Leukeamia UK John Goldman Fellowship, European Commission Marie Curie Actions Fellowship, MRC New Investigator Research Grant and project grants from Blood Cancer UK. In 2024 Sarah was awarded a Lister Institute Prize Fellowship.

Teaching

  • MSc Immunology and Immunotherapy
  • BSc Biomedical Science
  • MBChB Medicine

Postgraduate supervision

Sarah currently supervises 2 PhD students and 1 MSc student

For any doctoral research enquiries, please email: s.k.dimeloe@bham.ac.uk

Research

Research in Sarah’s laboratory focuses on the metabolism and interlinked immune function of immune cells in health and disease.

Metabolism describes how cells take up nutrients and break them down to provide energy and building blocks. This changes dramatically in immune cells when they become engaged in an immune response and is critical for their protective activity. Sarah’s lab aim to understand how this happens, and how it becomes dysregulated in diseases associated with altered immune cell function, including autoimmunity and cancer.

We are particularly interested in how the bone marrow environment impacts immune cell metabolism and protective activity in the blood cancer, multiple myeloma. We also study fundamental metabolic processes in immune cells, for example synthesis of the redox cofactor, NAD.

A recent research project investigated how an inflammatory cytokine (messenger molecule) promotes metabolic activity of T lymphocytes in rheumatoid arthritis. The article describing the results of this research can be accessed without access charges here:

https://www.science.org/stoken/author-tokens/ST-1867/full

(Bishop et al, TNF-α signals through ITK-Akt-mTOR to drive CD4+ T cell metabolic reprogramming, which is dysregulated in rheumatoid arthritis; Science Signaling; 2024; DOI: 10.1126/scisignal.adg5678)

Other activities

Sarah is a member of the Wellcome Trust Career Development Award interview panel

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Bishop, EL, Gudgeon, N, Fulton-Ward, T, Stavrou, V, Roberts, J, Boufersaoui, A, Tennant, DA, Hewison, M, Raza, K & Dimeloe, S 2024, 'TNF-α signals through ITK-Akt-mTOR to drive CD4+ T cell metabolic reprogramming, which is dysregulated in rheumatoid arthritis', Science signaling, vol. 17, no. 833, eadg5678. https://doi.org/10.1126/scisignal.adg5678

Stanulović, VS, Al Omair, S, Reed, MAC, Roberts, J, Potluri, S, Fulton-Ward, T, Gudgeon, N, Bishop, EL, Roels, J, Perry, TA, Sarkar, S, Pratt, G, Taghon, T, Dimeloe, S, Günther, UL, Ludwig, C & Hoogenkamp, M 2024, 'The glutamate/aspartate transporter EAAT1 is crucial for T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia proliferation and survival', Haematologica. https://doi.org/10.3324/haematol.2023.283471

Jenkins, BJ, Blagih, J, Ponce-Garcia, FM, Canavan, M, Gudgeon, N, Eastham, S, Hill, D, Hanlon, MM, Ma, EH, Bishop, EL, Rees, A, Cronin, JG, Jury, EC, Dimeloe, SK, Veale, DJ, Thornton, CA, Vousden, KH, Finlay, DK, Fearon, U, Jones, GW, Sinclair, LV, Vincent, EE & Jones, N 2023, 'Canagliflozin impairs T cell effector function via metabolic suppression in autoimmunity', Cell Metabolism, vol. 35, no. 7, pp. 1132-1146.e9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2023.05.001

Gudgeon, N, Giles, H, Bishop, EL, Fulton-Ward, T, Escribano-Gonzalez, C, Munford, H, James-Bott, A, Foster, K, Karim, F, Jayawardana, D, Mahmood, A, Cribbs, AP, Tennant, DA, Basu, S, Pratt, G & Dimeloe, S 2023, 'Uptake of long-chain fatty acids from the bone marrow suppresses CD8+ T-cell metabolism and function in multiple myeloma', Blood Advances, vol. 7, no. 20, pp. 6035-6047. https://doi.org/10.1182/bloodadvances.2023009890

Bishop, EL, Gudgeon, NH, Mackie, GM, Chauss, D, Roberts, J, Tennant, DA, Maslowski, KM, Afzali, B, Hewison, M & Dimeloe, S 2022, '1,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D3 suppresses CD4+ T-cell effector functionality by inhibition of glycolysis', Immunology, vol. 166, no. 3, pp. 299-309. https://doi.org/10.1111/imm.13472

Matheson, LS, Petkau, G, Sáenz-Narciso, B, D'Angeli, V, McHugh, J, Newman, R, Munford, H, West, J, Chakraborty, K, Roberts, J, Łukasiak, S, Díaz-Muñoz, MD, Bell, SE, Dimeloe, S & Turner, M 2022, 'Multiomics analysis couples mRNA turnover and translational control of glutamine metabolism to the differentiation of the activated CD4+ T cell', Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, 19657. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-24132-6

Gudgeon, N, Munford, H, Bishop, EL, Hill, J, Fulton-Ward, T, Bending, D, Roberts, J, Tennant, DA & Dimeloe, S 2022, 'Succinate uptake by T cells suppresses their effector function via inhibition of mitochondrial glucose oxidation', Cell Reports, vol. 40, no. 7, 111193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2022.111193

Garcia, AM, Bishop, E, Li, D, Jeffery, L, Garten, A, Thakker, A, Certo, M, Mauro, C, Tennant, DA, Dimeloe, S, Evelo, CT, Coort, SL & Hewison, M 2021, 'Tolerogenic effects of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D on dendritic cells involve induction of fatty acid synthesis', The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, vol. 211, 105891. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsbmb.2021.105891

Kolev, M, West, EE, Kunz, N, Chauss, D, Moseman, EA, Rahman, J, Freiwald, T, Balmer, ML, Lötscher, J, Dimeloe, S, Rosser, EC, Wedderburn, LR, Mayer-Barber, KD, Bohrer, A, Lavender, P, Cope, A, Wang, L, Kaplan, MJ, Moutsopoulos, NM, McGavern, D, Holland, SM, Hess, C, Kazemian, M, Afzali, B & Kemper, C 2020, 'Diapedesis-Induced Integrin Signaling via LFA-1 Facilitates Tissue Immunity by Inducing Intrinsic Complement C3 Expression in Immune Cells', Immunity, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 513-527.e8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2020.02.006

Bishop, E, Ismailova, A, Dimeloe, SK, Hewison, M & White, JH 2020, 'Vitamin D and immune regulation: antibacterial, antiviral, anti-inflammatory', JBMR Plus. https://doi.org/10.1002/jbm4.10405

Preprint

Copland, A, Mackie, G, Scarfe, L, Lecky, D, Gudgeon, N, McQuade, R, Ono, M, Barthel, M, Hardt, W-D, Ohno, H, Dimeloe, S, Bending, D & Maslowski, K 2023 'Salmonella cancer therapy metabolically disrupts tumours at the collateral cost of T cell immunity' bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.01.12.523780

Review article

Fletcher, J, Bishop, E, Harrison, S, Williamson-Swift, A, Cooper, SC, Dimeloe, S, Raza, K & Hewison, M 2022, 'Autoimmune disease and interconnections with vitamin D', Endocrine Connections, vol. 11, no. 3, e210554. https://doi.org/10.1530/EC-21-0554

Pallett, LJ, Dimeloe, S, Sinclair, LV, Byrne, AJ & Schurich, A 2021, 'A glutamine 'tug-of-war': targets to manipulate glutamine metabolism for cancer immunotherapy', Immunotherapy Advances, vol. 1, no. 1, ltab010. https://doi.org/10.1093/immadv/ltab010

Bishop, EL, Gudgeon, N & Dimeloe, S 2021, 'Control of T Cell Metabolism by Cytokines and Hormones', Frontiers in immunology, vol. 12, 653605. https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2021.653605

Munford, H & Dimeloe, S 2019, 'Intrinsic and Extrinsic Determinants of T Cell Metabolism in Health and Disease', Frontiers in Molecular Bioscience, vol. 6, pp. 118. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmolb.2019.00118

View all publications in research portal