Dr. Esteban CELIS received his Medical Degree and Ph.D from the National University of Mexico. In 1977-1979 he was the recipient of the prestigious Fogarty International Fellowship (from the National Institute of Health, to work as a post-doctoral fellow with the renowned immunologist, Dr. Herman Eisen at the Massachusettes Institute of Technology. Dr. Celis then returned to his native land of Mexico to set up a tumor immunology laboratory, while he continued to study the mechanism of immune resistance in cancer cells. In 1983 Dr. Celis returned to the United States and joined the private sector until 1997. During this time Dr. Celis held positions as: Senior Research Immunologist, Associate Professor, Rabies Research, Vice-president of Research and project Leader, Tumor Vaccine and Ex Vivo CTL with the following companies: Centocor, Inc., E.J. DuPont de Nemours & Co., The Wistar Institute, T Cell Sciences Inc., Cellcor Therapies, Inc. and Cytel Corporation/Epimmune. Prior to joining LSU Health Sciences Center Dr. Celis held the position of Professor in the Department of Immunology, Mayo Clinic. While at Mayo Clinic, Dr. Celis initiated three clinical trails using peptide-based vaccines for various types of cancer and submitted and received approval for one IND to the FDA for a peptide vaccine trail.

Dr. Celis's professional memberships include: American Association of Immunologists, American Society for Jistocompatibilty and Immunogenetics. Dr. Celis has four US patents issued: "Compositions and methods for eliciting CTL immunity", Methods for making HLA binding peptides and their uses", Methods for ex vivo therapy using peptide-loadined antigen presenting cells for the activation of CTL"", and "Induction of anti-tumor cytotoxic T Lymphocytes in humans using synthetic peptide epitopes". He is the lead author or co-author of 109 publications. Dr. Celis is a Professor of Pediatrics at LSU Medical School and is a member of the Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center.