Santos Mañes is a molecular immunologist, leading a research group at the Department of Immunology and Oncology of the Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CNB), a research institute that belongs to the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC).

His research is centered in understanding different aspects of the inflammatory reaction.

His group discovered that some chemokine receptors partitions in particular membrane domains termed lipid rafts. These lipid rafts are essential for the spatial and temporal organization of chemokine receptor signaling during chemotaxis.

His group also found that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) co-opt the partitioning of CD4, CXCR4 and CCR5 in these membrane domains to infect susceptible cells. The actin cytoskeleton, and particularly the actin binding protein filamin A, was shown central for the clustering of HIV receptors in lipid rafts during the entry process. This was the basis for the identification of a role for filamin A in WHIM syndrome (an immunodeficiency linked to CXCR4 mutations).

Another major finding of his group (in collaboration with Antonella Viola’s group) was the discovery of the chemokine receptor CCR5 as a co-stimulatory receptor during antigen-mediated CD4+T cell activation. Mañes’ group recently demonstrated that CCR5 expression in CD4+T cells maximizes antigen cross-presentation and anti-tumor activity of CD8+T cells.

His group also demonstrated the bidirectional communication between tyrosine kinase and chemokine receptors, and the pathophysiological relevance of CX3CR1-mediated transactivation of ErbB receptor for breast cancer promotion and development.

In lattest years, his group has studied how inflammation in the tumor microenvironment affects the biology of different stromal components. In this sense, his group recently identify a new pathway linking oxidative stress with the abnormalization of tumor vasculature.