Dr. Monica Guma Lab

Monica Guma, MD., PhD., received her M.D. at Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. She then completed a rheumatology fellowship at the Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital and her Ph.D. in immunology at Pompeu Fabra University, both in Barcelona, Spain. She later moved to University of California at San Diego for her postdoctoral fellowship and rheumatology clinical fellowship. Dr. Guma is now an Associate Professor of Medicine at UC San Diego and the Interim Co-chief, Rheumatology at the division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology at UC San Diego.

About the Lab

The Guma lab studies metabolic changes in cells critical for rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and osteoarthritispathogenesis, especially fibroblast-like synovioctyes and macrophages, to offer a novel and additional approach for combined therapy independent of systemic immunosuppression.

We also conduct clinical and translational research to identify noninvasive circulating metabolic biomarkers and to determine how they change after therapeutic interventions. Finally, we designed the ITIS diet, an anti-inflammatory diet for a complementary therapy in rheumatic patients. Our research also aims to determine whether or not an anti-inflammatory diet is a must-include therapeutic strategy by modulating microbiome and circulating metabolites.

Research Highlights

Discovering new disease mechanisms: recent findings published in the Annals of Rheumatic Diseases: Bustamante MF, Oliveira PG, Garcia-Carbonell R, Adam P Croft, Smith JM, Serrano LR, Sanchez-Lopez E, Liu X, Kisseleva T, Hay N, Buckley CD, Firestein GS, Murphy AN, Miyamoto S, Guma M. Hexokinase 2 as a novel selective metabolic target for rheumatoid arthritis.
Linking patient care and basic science research: Recent findings published in the Arthritis& Rheumatol. Rodríguez-Carrio J, Coras R, Alperi-López M, López P, Ulloa C, Ballina-García FJ, Armando AM, Quehenberger O, Guma M, Suárez A. Serum oxylipins profiling during the earliest stages of rheumatoid arthritis.
Linking diet with circulating metabolites: Bustamante MF A-PM, Cedola F, Coras C, Narasimhan R, Golshan S, Guma M. Design of an anti-inflammatory diet (ITIS DIET) for patients with rheumatoid arthritis.