Ignacio Moraga is currently a senior scientist in Prof. Christopher Garcia’s laboratory at Stanford University. Ignacio’s work in Prof. Garcia’s lab has focused on the fundamentals of cytokine receptor signaling and plasticity at a mechanistic level. Ignacio has combined advanced structural biology and protein engineering with cell biology to identify determinants that control plasticity and specificity of cytokine receptor signaling. In a work recently published in Cell, Ignacio unambiguously showed that specificity of cytokine receptor signaling can be systematically altered by modulating ligand-receptor binding geometries.

Prior to joining Prof. Garcia’s lab, Ignacio earned his Ph.D. in Physiology and Physopathology from the University Paris 6 in 2009, working with Dr. Sandra Pellegrini at the Pasteur Institute. During his thesis work Ignacio showed that the nature of different biological activities elicited by cytokines that bind to the same cell surface receptor are regulated by receptor densities at the cell surface.

Ignacio earned his B.Sc. degree form the University Autonoma de Madrid in 2005.