LOPEZ MACIAS, CONSTANTINO III ROBERTO

Prof. Constantino López-Macías is a leading Mexican immunologist specialising in vaccine development and translational immunology. He earned his BSc and PhD in Immunology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), conducting both undergraduate and doctoral research at the Mexican Institute for Social Security (IMSS) under the supervision of Prof. Armando Isibasi and Prof. Vianney Ortiz. He later pursued advanced research at the Institute of Experimental Immunology, University of Zurich, under Prof. Rolf Zinkernagel (Nobel Laureate in Medicine, 1996) and Prof. Hans Hengartner (Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine, 1997), and was also a visiting student at ETH Zurich.

Prof. López-Macías currently leads the Medical Research Unit on Immunochemistry at IMSS, Mexico’s largest public healthcare institution, and lectures at UNAM. He holds the highest distinction—Level III—in Mexico’s National System of Researchers (SNII). Internationally, he is Co-Director and a member of the Management Oversight Board of the global Bacterial Vaccine Network (BactiVac) based at the University of Birmingham UK and has been a Visiting Professor of Immunology at the University of Oxford in the UK. He is also a Council Member of the International Union of Immunological Societies representing Latin America in this global organisation.

His research focuses on the mechanisms that underlie long-lasting immunity and their application to the development of novel vaccines and adjuvants. He is co-inventor on patents for plant-virus based adjuvants, microbial-derived immunomodulators, and vaccines targeting Salmonella, influenza, and COVID 19. The adjuvants and immunomodulators have undergone preclinical evaluation, while the vaccines have been assessed in both preclinical and clinical studies under regulated frameworks. Notably, the COVID 19 vaccine platform he helped develop—based on Newcastle disease virus (NDV)—is the first domestically produced vaccine approved for population use in Mexico.

He is also co-founder of the Mexico Centre for Clinical Research, as well as the IMSS Flow Cytometry, Sequencing, Biobank, and Advanced Microscopy laboratories. In addition to his research leadership, Prof. López-Macías actively mentors and supervises undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students, contributing to the training of the next generation of scientists and clinicians.

He co-founded the Mexican Translational Immunology Group, a FOCIS-affiliated centre, and is a member of the “stars – Leaders of the Next Generation” programme (Switzerland). He was competitively elected as President of the Mexican Society of Immunology (2014–2016) and selected as a fellow of the Leaders in Innovation Fellowship (Royal Academy of Engineering, UK). He is also an elected member of both the Mexican Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine of Mexico and of Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Honor Society USA.

Prof. López-Macías serves on the Editorial Board of Vaccine (Elsevier) and as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Immunology.