Jonathan Bastos

Jonathan Bastos is a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy of Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels, Belgium. His research primarily focuses on microglia, brain macrophages, and their role in neurological conditions, with a strong emphasis on cellular development and function.

His research interests include:

• Microglia development and function
• Monocyte ontogeny and differentiation into tissue macrophages
• Single-cell analysis of brain immunity
• Neuroimmunology in neurodegenerative diseases
• RNA sequencing applications in neuroscience

Bastos has published extensively on brain macrophage development, with key findings on how monocytes can replace brain macrophages and generate microglia-like cells. His research employs advanced techniques including single-cell RNA sequencing (appearing in 32% of his work) and CRISPR screening to investigate microglia gene function. His fingerprint analysis shows strong focus areas in single cell proteins (100%), neuronal plasticity (55%), brain function (43%), and macrophages (40%).

His research has been cited 143 times with an h-index of 4, reflecting significant impact in his field. Publications span from 2020 to 2025, showing consistent output with increasing activity in recent years (1 project in 2020, 2 publications in 2022, 4 in 2024, and 3 in 2025).

Bastos has collaborated extensively with K. Movahedi, J. Van Ginderachter, and D. Kancheva on projects related to microglial development and brain macrophage transplantation. His work on the OZR3625 project investigated precursor-mediated microglial development as a basis for potential therapeutic applications.