VAZQUEZ PRADO, JOSE

José Vázquez-Prado was born in Mexico City. He is Professor of Pharmacology at Cinvestav in Mexico City. He studied Biology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Cell Biology at Cinvestav, and obtained a PhD in Basic Biomedical Research at the Cell Physiology Institute, UNAM, where he graduated with honors and received the Alfonso Caso Medal awarded by the University Council. During his doctoral studies, under the supervision of Adolfo García-Sáinz, he investigated the signal transduction of alpha-1 adrenergic receptors and their desensitization mechanisms. As a postdoctoral researcher in Silvio Gutkind's group, at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, he studied the signaling pathways that link G protein-coupled receptors with Rho family GTPases, leading cytoskeleton reorganization and cell migration. He currently mentors an enthusiastic group of talented graduate students investigating the molecular mechanisms of cancer cell migration, based on the hypothesis that RhoGEFs and their interacting proteins are crucial transducers of oncogenic signals and potential drug targets.
José Vázquez-Prado is founder of the Signal Transduction Branch of the Mexican Society of Biochemistry (https://iubmb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/iub.506) and organized the first and third Signal Transduction Meetings, together with Marina Macías-Silva and Guadalupe Reyes-Cruz (the first in 2007) and Fernando López-Casillas and Teresa Hernández-Sotomayor (the third in 2011). The third meeting, called Cell Signaling Networks International Congress, was sponsored by the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB), and other international academic societies.
For over 20 years, José Vázquez-Prado has been Principal Investigator at the Pharmacology Department at Cinvestav. The main hypothesis that guides the research of his group postulates that multidomain proteins, known as RhoGEFs, function as critical signaling platforms and oncogenic effectors in the molecular mechanisms that control the movement of metastatic cancer cells and other relevant cells within the tumor stroma, making RhoGEFs potential pharmacological targets. José Vázquez-Prado has had the privilege of guiding the work of more than twenty graduate students, fifteen of them at the doctoral level, who have made outstanding contributions to the investigation of the molecular mechanisms of signal transduction related to the activation of Rho GTPases and cell migration. A significant number of the doctoral theses completed under his mentorship have resulted in scientific publications in prestigious international journals such as the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the flagship publication of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Former members of his group have continued their postdoctoral careers at research institutions such as the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego; the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland; the Uppsala University in Sweden; the Barts Cancer Institute in London; and the Institute of Cellular Physiology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City. In graduate programs, José Vázquez-Prado teaches courses of Signal Transduction and Cell Biology, always emphasizing on stimulating the critical thinking of students.