Djamel Nehar-Belaid



I received my Ph.D. in Immunology from Sorbonne University (Paris) under the mentorship of Dr. David Klatzmann. I completed my postdoctoral fellowship at The Jackson laboratory for Genomic Medicine (CT, USA) under the mentorship of Dr. Jacques Banchereau. Within the Verhaak lab I led all efforts to dissect the tumor immune microenvironment in primary and recurrent brain tumors. My ongoing research in the Ucar lab focuses on using systems Immunology-driven approaches to explore human aging and immune disorders including pediatric COVID-19 and lupus.

-> Google scholar

-> My Bibliography (in chronological order): # denotes equal contribution

  1. Nehar-Belaid D#, Mejías A#, Xu Z, Marches R, Yerrabelli R, Chen G, Mertz S, Ye F, Sanchez P, Tsang J, Aydillo T, Miorin L, Cupic A, Garcia-Sastre A, Ucar D, Banchereau J# , Pascual V# , Ramilo O# . Immune perturbations induced by SARS-CoV2 in infants vary with disease severity and differ from adults’ responses. Nature Communications. 2025 May 16;16(1):4562. doi:10.1038/s41467-025-59411-z. PMID: 40379618.

  2. Spitzer A#, Johnson KC#, Nomura M#, Garofano L#, Nehar-Belaid D, Galili Darnell, [35 others], Lasorella A#, Iavarone A#, Iavarone A#, Verhaak RGW#, Tirosh I#, Suvà M#. The Multi-Layered Transcriptional Architecture of Glioblastoma Ecosystems. Nature Genetics. 2025 May;57(5):1168-1178. doi:10.1038/s41588-025-02168-4. PMID: 40346362.

  3. Nomura M#, Spitzer A#, Garofano L#, Johnson KC#, Nehar-Belaid D, Galili Darnell, [35 others], Lasorella A # , Verhaak RGW#, Iavarone A#, Suvà M#, Tirosh I#. Deciphering the Cellular Evolution of Glioblastoma by Integrative Single-Cell Genomics. Nature Genetics. 2025 May;57(5):1155-1167. doi:10.1038/s41588-025-02167-5. PMID: 40346361.

  4. Angarola BL, Sharma S, Neerja Katiyar N, Kang HG, Nehar-Belaid D, [4 others], Palucka K, Chuang JH, Korstanje R, Ucar D, Anczukόw O. Comprehensive single cell aging atlas of mammary tissues reveals shared epigenomic and transcriptomic signatures of aging and cancer. Nature Aging. 2025 Jan;5(1):122-143. doi.org/10.1038/s43587-024-00751-8. PMID: 39587369.

  5. Caielli S, Balasubramanian P, Balaji U, Wan Z, Baisch J, Walters L, Smitherman C, Nehar-Belaid D, Marches R, [3 others], Banchereau J.F, Gu J, Wright T and Pascual V. Type I Interferon promotes MxA-dependent IL-1B release in SLE monocytes. Immunity. 2024 Nov 12;57(11):2497-2513.e12. doi:10.1016/j.immuni.2024.09.004. PMID: 39378884.

  6. Ravichandran S, Erra-Diaz F, Karakaslar O, Marches R, Kenyon-Pesce L, Rossi R, Chaussabel D, Nehar-Belaid D, Pascual V, [3 others], Kuchel GA, Banchereau J, Ucar D. Distinct baseline immune characteristics associated with responses to conjugated and unconjugated pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccines in older adults. Nature Immunology. 2024 Jan 5. doi:10.1038/s41590-023-01717-5. PMID: 38182669.

  7. Nouri N#, Giacomelli Cao R#, Bunsow E#, Nehar-Belaid D#, Marches R, [7 others], Mejías A, Banchereau J, Pascual V, Ramilo O. Longitudinal Immune Profiling of Young Infants Initial Vaccinations Reveals Heterogeneous Serological Responses and Extensive but Reversible Transcriptional Changes in Most Immune Cell Types. Nature Communications. 2023 Dec 2;14(1):7976. doi:0.1038/s41467-023-43758-2. PMID: 38042900.

  8. Nehar-Belaid D, Sokolowski M, Baarathi S, Banchereau J, Chaussabel D, Ucar D. Baseline immune states (BIS) associated with vaccine responsiveness and factors that shape the BIS. Seminars in Immunology. 2023 doi.org/10.1016/j.smim.2023.101842. PMID: 37717525.

  9. Cheong J-G, Ravishankar A, Sharma S, Parkhurst C, Grassmann S, Wingert CK, Laurent P, Sai Ma, Paddock L, Miranda I, Karakaslar O, Nehar-Belaid D, [33 others], Pascual V, Elemento O, Schwartz RE, Buenrostro J, Niec RE, Barrat FJ, Lief L, Sun J, Ucar D, Josefowicz SZ. Epigenetic memory of coronavirus infection in innate immune cells and their progenitors. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2023.07.019. Cell. 2023. PMID: 37597510.

  10. George PJ, Marches R, Nehar-Belaid D, Banchereau J, Lustigman S. Single Cell Analysis of Blood Mononuclear Cells Stimulated Through Either LPS or Anti-CD3 and Anti-CD28. doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2022.961094. Front. Immunol.. 2022. PMID: 36119026.

  11. Varn FS, Johnson KC, Martinek J, Huse JT, Nasrallah MP, Wesseling P, Cooper LAD, Malta TM, Wade TE, Sabedot TS, Brat D, Gould PV, Wöehrer A, Aldape K, Ismail A, Sivajothi SK, Barthel FP, Kim H, Kocakavuk E, Ahmed N, White K, Datta I, Moon HE, Pollock S, Goldfarb C, Lee GH, Garofano L, Anderson KJ, Nehar-Belaid D, Barnholtz-Sloan JS, Bakas S, Byrne AT, D’Angelo F, Gan HK, Khasraw M, Migliozzi S, Ormond DR, Paek SH, Van Meir EG, Walenkamp AME, Watts C, Weiss T, Weller M, Palucka K, Stead LF, Poisson LM, Noushmehr H, Iavarone A, Verhaak RGW. Glioma progression is shaped by genetic evolution and microenvironment interactions. 2022 May 24. Cell .doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.04.038. PMID: 35649412.

  12. Dérian N, Pham HP, Nehar-Belaid D, Tchitchek N, Klatzmann D, Eric V, Six A. The Tsallis generalized entropy enhances the interpretation of transcriptomics datasets. PLoS One. 2022; 17(4):e0266618. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0266618. PMID: 35446844; PMCID: PMC9022844.

  13. Thibodeau A, Eroglu A, McGinnis CS, Lawlor N, Nehar-Belaid D, Kursawe R, Marches R, Conrad DN, Kuchel GA, Gartner ZJ, Banchereau J, Stitzel ML, Cicek AE, Ucar D. AMULET: a novel read count-based method for effective multiplet detection from single nucleus ATAC-seq data. Genome Biol. 2021 Sep 1;22(1):252. doi: 10.1186/s13059-021-02469-x. PMID:34465366.

  14. Lawlor N, Nehar-Belaid D, Grassmann JDS, Stoeckius M, Smibert P, Stitzel ML, Pascual V, Banchereau J, Williams A, Ucar D. Single Cell Analysis of Blood Mononuclear Cells Stimulated Through Either LPS or Anti-CD3 and Anti-CD28. 2021 Mar 17; Front. Immunol . 12:636720. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.636720. PMID:33815388.

  15. Nehar-Belaid D, Hong S, Marches R, Chen G, Bolisetty M, Baisch J, Walters L, Punaro M, Rossi R, Chung C-H, Huynh R, Singh P, Flynn W.F, Tabanor J-A, Kuchipudi N, Mejias A, Collet M, Lucido A-L, Palucka K, Robson P, Lakshminarayanan S, Ramilo O, Wright T, Pascual V and Banchereau J. Mapping SLE heterogeneity at the single cell level. Nature Immunology. 2020 Aug 3. doi: 10.1038/s41590-020-0743-0. PMID:32747814.

  16. Pereira BI# , De Maeyer RPH# , Covre LP# , Nehar-Belaid D#, Lanna A, Ward S, Marches R, Chambers ES, Gomes DCO, Riddell NE, Maini MK, Teixeira VH, Janes SM, Gilroy DW, Larbi A, Mabbott NA, Ucar D, Kuchel GA, Henson SM, Strid J, Lee JH, Banchereau J#, Akbar AN#. Sestrins Induce Natural Killer Function In Senescent-like CD8+ T Cells. Nature Immunology. 2020 Mar 30. doi: 10.1038/s41590-020-0643-3. PMID:32231301.

  17. Márquez EJ, Chung C-H, Marches R, Rossi RJ, Nehar-Belaid D, Mellert DJ, Kuchel GA, Banchereau J, Ucar D. Sexual-dimorphism in human immune system aging. Nature Communications. 2020 Feb 6;11(1):751. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-14396-9. PMID: 32029736.

  18. Hong S, Banchereau R, Maslow BL, Guerra MM, Cardenas J, Baisch J, Branch DW, Porter TF, Sawitzke A, Laskin CA, Buyon JP, Merrill J, Sammaritano LR, Petri M, Gatewood E, Cepika AM, Ohouo M, Obermoser G, Anguiano E, Kim TW, Nulsen J, Nehar-Belaid D, Blankenship D, Turner J, Banchereau J, Salmon JE, Pascual V. Longitudinal profiling of human blood transcriptome in healthy and lupus pregnancy. The Journal of Experimental Medicine. 2019 May 6;216(5):1154-1169. doi: 10.1084/jem.20190185. PMID:30962246.

  19. Pitoiset F, Vazquez T, Levacher B, Nehar-Belaid D, Vigneron J, Torrieri-Dramard L, Klatzmann D and Bellier B. Retrovirus-based Virus-Like Particle Immunogenicity and its Modulation by Toll-Like Receptor Activation. Journal of Virology. 2017 Oct 13;91(21). pii: e01230-17. doi: 10.1128/JVI.01230-17. PMID:28794025.

  20. Nordor AV, Nehar-Belaid D, Richon S, Klatzmann D, Bellet D, Fournier T, Dangles-Marie V and Aryee MJ. The early pregnancy placenta foreshadows DNA methylation alterations of solid tumors. Epigenetics. 2017 Sep;12(9):793-803. doi: 10.1080/15592294.2017.1342912. PMID:28678605.

  21. Courau T, Nehar-Belaid D, Florez LM, Levacher B, Vazquez T, Brimaud F, Bellier B and Klatzmann D. TGFβ and VEGF cooperatively control the immunotolerant tumor environment and the efficacy of cancer immunotherapies. The Journal of Clinical Investigation Insights. 2016;1(9):e85974. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight. 85974. PMID:27699271.

  22. Nehar-Belaid D, Courau T, Dérian N, Florez ML, Ruocco MG and Klatzmann D. Regulatory T cells similarly orchestrate tolerance to fetuses and tumors. The Journal of Immunology. January 15, 2016, 196 (2) 678- 690; doi:10.4049/jimmunol.1501834. PMID:26643476.

Under Review Manuscripts:

  1. Nehar-Belaid D$, Thibodeau A, Eroglu A, Marches R, Eryilmaz G, Unutmaz D, Mejias A, Pascual V, Kuchel G#, Ramilo O#, Banchereau J#, Ucar D#,$. Single-cell map of the human immune system across the lifespan reveals infant-specific immune signatures. Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.28.667181v1. PMID:40766403. $corresponding authors.

  2. Thibodeau A# , Mejias A# , Nehar-Belaid D, Marches R, [4 others], Pascual V, Banchereau J #, Ramilo O#, Ucar D#. Infants display reduced NK cell responses in RSV and increased inflammatory responses in SARS-CoV-2 infections. Preprint: doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-5640872/v1. PMID: 39877087.

  3. Grabauskas T, Verschoor C.P, Trinity L, Marches R, Thibodeau A, Nehar-Belaid D, Eryilmaz G, Picard E, Kuo C-L, Schmader K.E, Colon-Emeric C, Whitson H.E, Paust S, García-Sastre A, Banchereau J, Kuchel G.A, Ucar D. CMV reshapes lymphoid immunity in aging: a single-cell atlas with predictive modeling. Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025.06.24.661167. PMID: 40666903.