Esteban Celis, MD

PhD Scientific Advisor

Dr. Celis has served as a scientific consultant for Oncovir since 2005. Prior to his retirement from Academia in 2021, Dr. Esteban Celis was the Director of the Cancer Vaccine Initiative and Leader of the Cancer Immunology, Inflammation and Tolerance Program of the Georgia Cancer Center, Augusta University in Augusta Georgia, USA. He held the position of Professor in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Biochemistry & Cancer Biology. Dr. Celis held the Georgia Research Alliance/Cecil F. Whitaker Jr. MD Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Cancer Immunology.

Before joining Augusta University, Dr. Celis was a Sr. Member of the Moffitt Cancer Center and Professor of the Department of Oncologic Sciences of the University of South Florida in Tampa FL. At Moffitt he developed peptide-based vaccination strategies for cancer.

Dr. Celis received his MD/PhD degrees from the National University of Mexico, Mexico City and after his postdoctoral training at MIT, he held research and leadership positions in several Pharma /Biotech companies, such as Centocor and Cytel.  Prior to Moffitt, he was a Professor of Immunology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN where he initiated 3 clinical trails using peptide vaccines for various types of cancer.

He is an Emeritus Member of the American Association of Immunologists and the American Association for Cancer Research. He served as a full member of the Cancer Immunopathology and Immunotherapy Study Section of the NIH, previously served as a member of the Experimental Immunology Study Section, was a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the NCI, section editor of the Journal of Immunology and associate editor of Cancer Research.
Dr. Celis has authored 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications. Three areas of research were investigated in his laboratory: 1) Identification of peptide T-cell epitopes; 2) Overcoming immune tolerance to elicit effective anti-tumor immunity; and 3) Development of effective therapeutic peptide vaccines for cancer.