David Sancho is a Full Professor at the Spanish National Cardiovascular Research Center (CNIC) in Madrid. He specialized in Clinical Immunology during his residency at Hospital La Princesa (Madrid) while completing a PhD in basic research at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. In 2004, he joined the London Research Institute (Cancer Research UK) as a postdoctoral fellow, where he identified a new C-type lectin receptor, DNGR-1/CLEC9A, which selectively marks the population of human and mouse dendritic cells specialized in cross-presenting antigens on MHC-I. His work also established the role of DNGR-1/CLEC9A in cross-priming in vivo and its potential as a target for immunotherapy.

Since 2010, he has led the Immunobiology Laboratory at CNIC, where he has investigated how dendritic cells sense tissue damage through DNGR-1/CLEC9A in the context of infection and sterile injury. He has also focused on the specific functions of cDC1s and their targeting for effective immunotherapy in preclinical models of cancer, obesity and atherosclerosis. Additionally, his group studies the metabolism of distinct DC subsets, which provides new opportunities for functional manipulation.