Judith Simcox PhD

Thrilled to have our story on the regulation of lysosomal lipids out in @Cell_Metabolism! The work was led by two outstanding grad students @_JessDavidson and Raghav Jain probing mechanistic control of energy expenditure @HHMINEWS @UWBiochem

The @Wei_Lab_WISC and @JudithSimcox Labs are investigating how a metabolite linked to obesity and type 2 diabetes is regulated, a deeper understanding that could reveal new biological pathways involved in appetite and metabolism. Read more: biochem.wisc.edu/2026/06/17/res…

🧠🏃 New preprint exercise neuroscience from the lab! We built a multi-organ spatial metabolomic atlas of long-term exercise in mice. Six organs. 224 metabolic features. Coordinated inter-organ remodeling. The biggest surprise? The brain reshaped its metabolism the most, region by region. We took the same approach into PS19 tau mice. Exercise cut over 70% of observable tau pathology in the hippocampus and restored the mitochondrial metabolome. Integrated proteomics + spatial metabolomics pointed to one convergent node: NADH dehydrogenase Complex I. So we tested it. We expressed yeast Ndi1 in PS19 neurons. No exercise. This alone raised brain antioxidants, restored shuttle metabolites, and reduced tau pathology. Boosting Complex I activity reproduces the core anti-tau effects of exercise. A molecular handle on why movement may protect the aging brain. biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

Our latest study out in @MolecularCell explores how and why MHC class I is aberrantly targeted for degradation via the autophagy-lysosome pathway in pancreatic cancer. Congrats to postdoc extraordinaire @marineberquez for leading this study! @UCSFAnatomy @UCSFCancer

Excited to share our new paper: 'LASER couples damage sensing to ESCRT assembly for lysosome repair.' Congrats to dream team @clairegoul and @aakritijain24 for uncovering a new lysosome repair pathway and its connection to neurodegeneration. bit.ly/49FCPoq

In the W-S lab's first preprint, we describe how genomic language models know something about RNA thermodynamics. Though we think this is cool, things get tricky! A growing practice for interpreting LMs is to perturb input tokens, often called "Categorical Jacobian": 👇

Join us for Isabella James's Ph.D. thesis defense on June 19. Her research in the @JudithSimcox Lab focused on ceramides, a class of lipids, investigating their synthesis and how they move among tissues. Learn more: ipib.wisc.edu/2026/05/29/ipi…

In a paper just published in @sciencemagazine, we teamed up with @teichlab to construct the most detailed atlas to date of hormone production and action in humans at cellular resolution. (1/8) Link: science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

New publication from our group: what happens inside human endometrial tumors during a ketogenic diet? We analyzed paired tumor biopsies before and after a very low-carbohydrate intervention in women with endometrial cancer 🧵

Excited to share the first manuscript from our lab! Here we identified a shared enzymatic mechanism linking N-acetylated β-amino acids to energy balance regulation @jbiolchem. Congratulations to our first PhD student, Ruida Li, from @CMB_UWMadison, for leading this work. Grateful for the tremendous support from @JudithSimcox @UWBiochem @longlabstanford @ssiipei jbc.org/article/S0021-…

Happy to have contributed to this preprint with Fangzhu Zhao and @realJimWells! LRP8-targeted bispecific antibody degraders degrade the selenium uptake receptor LRP8, reduce GPX4 / selenoproteins, and sensitize cancer cells to ferroptosis. biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

Two for Thursday: We want to highlight another fantastic collaboration, this time with William Oldham's lab at Brown University and our @N8Krah, demonstrating that MCT4 is a druggable target in pulmonary fibrosis. Check it out here: science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… @UofUHematology @huntsmancancer Congrats to everyone involved!

Dearest gentle reader, we are delighted to announce a new story from our lab published in @Nature describing how a meal's systemic metabolic changes are interpreted by your immune system to enhance adaptive immunity. A thread 1/ nature.com/articles/s4158…

The Booker Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, and HHMI is searching for a lab manager. If interested, please apply at the HHMI link below.hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/External…

For 40+ years, we’ve known how UCP1 drives thermogenesis—but how UCP1-independent pathways are activated remained unknown. Thrilled to share our @Nature paper, led by Faiz Hussain, uncovering this mechanism: nature.com/articles/s4158…

📢🎉@hhmi_science competition for the next cohorts of #HannaGray Fellows and #FreemanHrabowski Scholars opening 11/3/2026. Senior postdocs and faculty within 7 years of appointment. Up to $10M over 10 yrs, + salary & benefits. Spread the word and consider applying! bit.ly/4vhC0LA

I am very happy to share that our paper is now published in @Nature 😊 Cell-type-targeted mitochondrial transplantation rescues cell degeneration. nature.com/articles/s4158… @IOB_ch (1/6)

Updated preprint! Here, we identify an SREBP-dependent fatty acid sensing metabolic switch in Drosophila, enabling dramatic metabolic rewiring within adipose tissue that boosts carbohydrate metabolism in the absence of fat. Read more here: biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

New publication from the lab, led by the talented graduate student @ankurkumar110 , demonstrating that reduced plasmalogen ether lipid biosynthesis may contribute to age-dependent impairments of mitochondrial morphology and membrane dynamics. authors.elsevier.com/a/1mrba3Im5lHaF

Interested in aging and rejuvenation? We have a new Research Assistant position to understand aging at the cellular level!! Come join our team!!! 😎 careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/life-scie…

Our Human Multiomic Development Atlas paper is out in Nature today! A heart-felt "thank you" to all co-authors for their tireless work on this complex yet exciting project! Congrats all! nature.com/articles/s4158…