López de Castro, José Antonio

José Antonio López de Castro Álvarez (1949, Bilbao) is an immunologist specializing in the molecular biology of human histocompatibility antigens, or HLA.

Bachelor in Chemistry (1971) and Ph.D. (1975) at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. As a post-doctoral researcher at the Biophysics Department, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (1976-1978), he carried out structural studies on antibodies under the supervision of Prof. Roberto J. Poljak. Later on, at the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department of Harvard University (1978-1979), he contributed to determining the structure of the first histocompatibility antigen known at a molecular level, HLA-B7, under the supervision of Prof. Jack L. Strominger.

As an independent researcher, first at the Jiménez Díaz Foundation in Madrid (1980-1986) and later at the Severo Ochoa Centre of Molecular Biology, run by the National Council of Scientific Research (CSIC) and the Autonomous University of Madrid (1987-2019), his research focused primarily on the study of the molecular properties of HLA-B27 antigens and the mechanisms whereby this protein participates in the pathogeny of certain chronic rheumatic diseases called spondyloarthropathies, the prototype of which is  ankylosing spondylitis.

In this field, professor López de Castro determined the chemical structure of HLA-B27 and of some functional variants of this antigen differentially associated with disease. Further studies focused on the analysis of the peptide repertoires presented by HLA-B27, the relationships between these repertoires and the susceptibility to developing spondyloarthropathies and on the structural relationships between peptides deriving from arthritogenic bacteria and human proteins as a possible mechanism for an autoimmune pathogeny of these diseases. From 2012 onwards the research of professor López de Castro was mainly focused on the mechanisms whereby the endoplasmic reticulum aminopeptidases (ERAP-1 and ERAP-2) process the peptide repertoires presented to the Immune System by HLA-B27 and other disease-associated HLA antigens, namely HLA-A29 y HLA-B51.

José Antonio López de Castro has published over 150 research papers and supervised 28 Ph.D. theses. He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and the 1998 Euskadi Research Award winner.