Sergio M. Pontejo, Ph.D.

Dr. Pontejo was born in Bilbao, Spain. He obtained two bachelor’s degrees in biology and biochemistry at the University of Navarra, received his doctoral degree in molecular biology at the Autonomous University of Madrid, and completed his postdoctoral training at NIAID, where he is currently a staff scientist in the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology.

His research focus has always been on understanding how viruses, particularly poxviruses and herpesviruses, interfere with the host cytokine and chemokine networks and applying this knowledge to gain new insights into the mechanisms of action of the immune system. By studying these viral families, he has characterized the role of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and chemokines in the antiviral immune response and engineered new anti-TNF therapeutics with heightened TNF specificity and anti-inflammatory properties.

More recently, while studying herpesvirus-encoded chemokines, he discovered that viral and human chemokines bind anionic membrane phospholipids with high affinity and proved the relevance of this interaction for phagocyte recruitment by extracellular vesicles in efferocytosis. His findings have established chemokines as the first example of a family of soluble extracellular cytokines whose bioactivity can be regulated by direct interaction with plasma membrane phospholipids.