Niranjana Natarajan, PhD

  • Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine

Education & Training

  • SASTRA University, BS/MS, Biotechnology, 2011
  • Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine, PhD, Cellular and Molecular Physiology, 2016
  • Postdoc: Harvard University, 2016-2019, University of Pittsburgh, 2020-2024

Research Interests

Cardiovascular disease in CVD is the leading cause of mortality in the developed world and contributes to 1/3rd of all-cause mortality in the United States. Cardiac fibrosis is a key pathological feature of most cardiovascular diseases. Excessive deposition of extracellular matrix proteins results in adverse cardiac remodeling, loss of compliance and cardiac function, leading to heart failure. Macrophages are the primary immune cells in the heart and play a wide variety of roles in cardiac physiology and CVD. In response to environmental stimuli, macrophages can mediate pathological inflammatory processes or reparative tissue remodeling, causing alterations in collagen turnover, cardiomyocyte stiffness and altered cardiac metabolism. My work focuses on macrophage fibroblast paracrine signaling events that mediate cardiac fibrosis in cardiovascular disease. We are interested in exploring of chemosensory GPCRs in macrophages in heart failure. We are also interested in taking a systems approach to understand inter organ crosstalk and inflammatory signaling in the pathology of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF).

Publications

1. Natarajan N, Florentin J, Johny E, Xiao H, O'Neil SP, Lei L, Shen J, Ohayon L, Johnson AR, Rao K, Li X, Zhao Y, Zhang Y, Tavakoli S, Shiva S, Das J, Dutta P. Aberrant mitochondrial DNA synthesis in macrophages exacerbates inflammation and atherosclerosis. Nat Commun. 2024;15(1):7337. Epub 20240826. doi: 10.1038/s41467- 024-51780-1. PubMed PMID: 39187565; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC11347661.

2. Natarajan N, Vujic A, Das J, Wang AC, Phu KK, Kiehm SH, Ricci-Blair EM, Zhu AY, Vaughan KL, Colman RJ, Mattison JA, Lee RT. Effect of dietary fat and sucrose consumption on cardiac fibrosis in mice and rhesus monkeys. JCI Insight. 2019;4(18). Epub 20190919. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.128685. PubMed PMID: 31415241; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6795382

3. Natarajan N, Abbas Y, Bryant DM, Gonzalez-Rosa JM, Sharpe M, Uygur A, Cocco- Delgado LH, Ho NN, Gerard NP, Gerard CJ, MacRae CA, Burns CE, Burns CG, Whited JL, Lee RT. Complement Receptor C5aR1 Plays an Evolutionarily Conserved Role in Successful Cardiac Regeneration. Circulation. 2018;137(20):2152-65. Epub 20180118. doi: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.117.030801. PubMed PMID: 29348261; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5953786.

4 . Natarajan N, Hori D, Flavahan S, Steppan J, Flavahan NA, Berkowitz DE, Pluznick JL. Microbial short chain fatty acid metabolites lower blood pressure via endothelial G proteincoupled receptor 41. Physiol Genomics. 2016;48(11):826-34. Epub 20160923. doi: 10.1152/physiolgenomics.00089.2016. PubMed PMID: 27664183; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6223570

Link to all publications