Prof Antonio Alcami

Prof Antonio Alcamí is a Research Professor at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). He started working on poxviruses in 1991 in the laboratory of Prof Geoffrey Smith at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford (UK) and later established his own research group in 1998 at the University of Cambridge (UK, Departments of Pathology and Medicine). He moved to CSIC in 2003 and works at Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa in Madrid (Spain). He is interested in understanding the poxvirus mechanisms that counteract the host immune response, discovering poxvirus-encoded secreted cytokine decoy receptors, and viral pathogenesis using mouse models of infection. He is engaged in mpox virus research to understand pathogenesis and immune evasion strategies of the new mpox virus clades. He is also interested in airborne transmission of emerging respiratory viruses including SARS-CoV-2 and highly pathogenic avian influenza virus, and metagenomic studies to discover new viruses.  

 He has led 51 research projects and authored 197 publications, with a h-index of 52 (Web of Science). He was chairman of the Biomedicine Research Program in the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (2013-2016) and is a corresponding member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Pharmacy.