He now works at the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC) in Madrid, where he was vice-director and founded and directed the Department of Immunology and Oncology from 1996 to 2004, thanks to a large collaborative core grant from Pharmacia/Pfizer.
In April 2008 he moved from this position to his present one in the Ministry for Science and Innovation, and was substituted by Rafael Rodrigo Montero at the CSIC presidency.
He identified some of the mechanisms involved in cytokine- and chemokine-activated signaling pathways and their relevance in HIV-1 infection, cell migration and cancer.
[4] Under his leadership, a large number of PhD students and postdoctoral scientists have been trained, many of whom are presently in leading academic and biopharmaceutical institutes worldwide.
He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the Academia Europaea, the Hassan II Academy of Sciences and Technologies or Morocco (6), and Doctor honoris causa of several universities.