Colleges
Madelon de Jong
MD PhD
Arthritis UK Career Development Fellow
I am an Arthritis UK Career Development Fellow and clinician-scientist at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, where I lead a research programme on bone marrow changes in autoimmune disease.
I trained in Medicine (MD) and Infection & Immunity (MSc) at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and completed my PhD at the Erasmus MC Cancer Institute (with Tom Cupedo and Pieter Sonneveld). During my PhD, I studied the bone marrow microenvironment in multiple myeloma, identifying inflammatory mesenchymal stromal cells (iMSC) with tumour-supportive and myeloid-modulatory properties (de Jong et al., Nature Immunology 2021), and I subsequently showed that stromal cells and neutrophils form a feed-forward inflammatory circuit in diseased bone marrow that persists despite therapy (de Jong et al., Nature Immunology 2024).
Building on this work, my current research focuses on how changes in blood cell production contribute to autoimmune disease, with the aim of identifying new therapeutic opportunities.
Key publications
The autoantigen TRIM21 assembles proinflammatory immune complexes after lytic cell death.
Journal article
Jones Evans EL. et al, (2026), Sci Immunol, 11
Circulating tumor cells in myeloma are a compound biomarker for bone marrow high-risk genomic alterations and tumor load.
Journal article
Fokkema C. et al, (2025), Blood
Bone marrow inflammation in haematological malignancies.
Journal article
de Jong MME. et al, (2024), Nat Rev Immunol, 24, 543 - 558
n IL-1β-driven neutrophil-stromal cell axis fosters a BAFF-rich protumor microenvironment in individuals with multiple myeloma.
Journal article
de Jong MME. et al, (2024), Nat Immunol, 25, 820 - 833
The multiple myeloma microenvironment is defined by an inflammatory stromal cell landscape.
Journal article
de Jong MME. et al, (2021), Nat Immunol, 22, 769 - 780