We protect your health through science
About us
The National Center of Microbiology (CNM) is one of the centers belonging to the Carlos III Institute of Health, and provides scientific-technical support to the General State Administration, the Autonomous Communities and the National Health System (NHS), as stated in the General Health Law (Law 14/1986, April 25) and the Statute of the Carlos III Institute of Health (RD 375/2001, April 6 and its subsequent reform, RD 1672/2009, November 6). This specific mission of scientific-technical support in the field of infectious diseases is based on six main pillars:
Diagnosis
The CNM supports the health care work of the SNS through laboratory diagnosis of infections, especially those emerging or infrequent. The maximum exponent of this function is the participation in the diagnosis of health alerts for which it has a Rapid Response System active 365 days a year.
Control and prevention
The CNM plays a key role in controlling the spread of pathogens through the molecular characterization of outbreaks by clones caused by particularly dangerous microorganisms, as well as the study of their possible pathways of dissemination.
Investigation
The CNM promotes quality, collaborative and multidisciplinary research through the use of new technologies. Collaboration with national and international health care and research institutions facilitates the transfer of knowledge to the NHS.
Reference and surveillance
The CNM maintains active Microbiological Surveillance Programs based on the phenotypic and molecular characterization of microorganisms, which allows early detection of changes in trends of the main infectious diseases. It also maintains and facilitates access to reference resources and materials.
The CNM periodically publishes the results of these surveillance programs in guides, which can be consulted in the following documents:
Advice and training
The CNM provides important scientific advice to health professionals and public health authorities on emerging pathogens or new mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance or virulence, as well as on the implementation of new protocols or laboratory techniques. In this sense, it is also worth mentioning the importance of the informative work addressed to the general population.
Quality
Director
The current director of CNM is Dr. José Miguel Rubio Muñoz.
Dr. José Miguel Rubio has a degree in Biological Sciences from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (1986) and a PhD in Biological Sciences from the same university (1992). He carried out his doctoral thesis at the Department of Genetics of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, as Associate Professor (1988-1989), and at the School of Biology of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, as Senior Research Assistant (1989-1992).
During his postdoctoral period he obtained a grant from the European Commission within the Human Capital and Mobility Program to be carried out at the University of “La Sapienza” in Rome, Italy and the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in Crete, Greece (1993-1994). Subsequently, he made a further stay funded by the WHO and the university itself at the Department of Entomology, Wageningen University, The Netherlands (1994-1996).
Since 1997 he has been a member of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), where he joined the Department of Parasitology of the National Center of Microbiology, as an EU-INCO postdoctoral fellow and later with a grant from the Autonomous Community of Madrid (CAM). She was part of the founding group of the National Center for Tropical Medicine (2003-2006) and of the 24/7 Alerts and Emergencies Unit (2006-2018) and is currently Head of the Malaria and Emerging Parasitosis Unit of the National Microbiology Center and is part, as research staff, of the Center for Biomedical Research Network on Infectious Diseases (CIBERINFEC/ISCIII).
During his scientific career he has been Visiting Scientist at the Leonidas e Marie Dean Center (FIOCRUZ-AMAZONAS, Manaus, Brazil) and is an External Consultant of the Parasitology Departments of Cairo University (Egypt) and the Medical Research Center (MRC) of Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). He also belongs or has belonged to different national and international committees: Member of the expert group for malaria control of the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) since 2011; Expert-Evaluator for health programs of the European Commission since 2004; Spanish Representative (commissioned by ISCIII and MSC) in the Technical Scientific Committee of the TDR (WHO) 2007-2008; Spanish Deputy Focal Point for microbiology at the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) from 2012 to 2020; and, member of the Research Ethics Committee of ISCIII until 2019.
In this period he has published more than 100 articles in international indexed journals, 10 book chapters and has been co-editor of two books in the area of malaria, tropical medicine and neglected diseases. He has participated in 58 competitively funded research projects, 20 of them international, having been the principal investigator in 8 national and 11 international projects as PI of the project or WP leader. In addition, he has led five agreements with companies. Currently he has been awarded four sexenios of research, being presented this year 2025 to the fifth. In the teaching field, he participates in different postgraduate programs in the areas of microbiology and parasitology, having directed seven doctoral theses and more than 20 Master's or Degree final projects, both nationally and internationally.