I have to change fields from the beginning of my research career in biochemistry (pHD in Madrid Spain at UCM in 1974) and/or cell biology (pHD in Massachusetts USA at MIT in 1980), passing throughout 8 years in applied diagnostic kits using monoclonal antibodies for private companies (ITP and INVESGEN) to finally arrive to fish viral immunology at INIA (1988).
In the last 20 years at INIA (High security CISA centre and Biotechnology Department) I was directing research teams focused in the study of fish vaccines on the VHSV/trout and lately in zebrafish models.
The interfaces in between fields were fruitful in publications, since I applied previous ideas and/or techniques to the new fields, thus raising new discoveries. At INIA, I obtained 22, 3-year research grants (4 EU grants), which produced 78 ISI publications (32 in the last 10 years) with 617 citations (174 citations in the last 10 years, 19.28 citations per year) and 5 patents. In VHSV, I am now the second author by number of publications of > 500 ISI authors. I have also authored 51 papers in spanish or english, in non ISI journals and a total of 7 books in spanish.
What I consider my main accomplishment into the fish viral immunology field was the 50% protection to VHSV challenge of immunocompetent rainbow trout after immunization with DNA vaccines by immersion with ultrasound. I have been able to repeat those results in the zebrafish model.
I also developed new clot cloning, microneutralization, and solid-phase phospholipid binding methods which contributed to the mapping, cloning and expression of the most important fusion region of the G of VHSV and to fusion attenuated mutants. Many of my supervised graduate students are now pursuing scientific or scientific-related careers.
What I am now focused since a few years is in the search for potential adjuvants to vaccines by using the zebrafish model.
The main idea is to use as potential adjuvants for viral vaccines the same molecular signals that the body sends from the portal of viral entry tissues to the internal organs as soon as is being infected.
Molecular adjuvants (those made by endogenous peptide/proteins host responses) are one of the options left to make real the promising expectations raised by the advent of recombinant technologies to the vaccine field.
However the many possibilities will require large screening capable of screening hundreds of molecules to find the most fitting ones for each case. Zebrafish is the best model for that screnning becuase of their small size allows many experiments to be made and their genome, PCR arrays and microarrays are well annotated and available. Furthermore, large scale experimentation with the small zebrafish is easier than in any other animal model.
Therefore, my main interest now is the study of proteins and/or transcripts induced early after viral infection of the zebrafish Danio rerio. Initial viral models which I am studying are the viral haemorrhagic septicemia (VHSV) and infectious salmon anaemia virus (ISAV), rhabdo- and orthomyxo- , respectively, fish viruses causing important diseases in aquacultured fish throughout the world. Early after zebrafish infection, differentially expressed protein (DIGE and iTRAQ) and transcript (RT-Q-PCR and microarrays) levels of zebrafish genes are being studied comparatively in infected versus non infected several tissues (skin, blood and internal organs).
Preliminary results have been used sucesfully by our group with rhabdoviral infection, resulting in the identification of about 10 completely new unexpected genes involved in the early response to infection. Some of those genes would contribute to the knowledge of the earliest molecular events occurring at the beginning of in vivo infections while others have the potential to be used as new molecular adjuvants for improvement of existing vaccines including not only those of fish but also of humans.