The first star of the LIVE “Pasteur” promotion has passed away, struck by devastating cancer; he will continue to shine forever in our hearts.
Dear Diego,
Trainee at Institut Pasteur Paris in the “Epidemiology and Pathophysiology of Oncogenic Viruses Unit”, then at the National Centre for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC, Madrid) starting your experimental journey with your bachelor thesis on “A biosafe assay for HIV-1 microRNA expression and sorting into exosomes”, you graduated with an excellent Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry obtained at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2017.
We were fortunate to select you in 2017 and to benefit from your smart, gentle and dynamic spirit onboarding within the wonderful LIVE family. We had a lot of joy in contributing to your training during two years with your Pasteur classmates at the universities of Barcelona, Antwerp, Saint-Etienne and Lyon in the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master, Leading International Vaccinology Education – LIVE. With Bea, Dimitrios and Sultan, you organized the successful 2018 international Research Instructive Workshop to dream and make your classmates efficiently dream about their Life after LIVE. As part of your LIVE Master’s thesis, you studied the “Local immune response to the yellow fever 17D vaccine (Stamaril) and wild-type virus in non-human primates using immuno-histo-fluorescence and high-dimensional clustering analyses of flow cytometry data” under the supervisions of Dr Roger Le Grand and Dr Frédéric Martinon at CEA-IDMIT “Infectious Disease Models and Innovative Therapies” in France. You excelled and completed your Master’s degree at the top of your class in 2019.
Subsequently, you were awarded an INPhINIT Retaining PhD fellowship from “la Caixa” and conducted highly productive research (Calzada-Fraile D, et al. Immune synapse formation promotes lipid peroxidation and MHC-I upregulation in licensed dendritic cells for efficient priming of CD8+ T cells. Nat Commun. 2023) within the “Intercellular Communication in the Inflammatory Response group”, led by Professor Francisco Sánchez, at the National Centre for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC, Madrid). Always eager to learn and push boundaries, you defined yourself professionally simply as a “Team-player Immunologist” and became an exceptional one with your PhD defended in 2023.
In 2023, you pursued your journey as Scientist, working at BioNTech SE (Mainz, Germany) on the preclinical development of novel mRNA vaccine candidates for infectious diseases, driving the scientific strategy, developing novel assays for screening and contributing to the development of the technology via investigating their mechanism of action.
In parallel, you have also generously returned to Lyon on several occasions. You shared your science and motivated undergraduate (L3, Introduction à l’Infectiologie) as well as graduate (M2 LIVE) students. In 2024, you instilled them confidence about the value of their skills, also bringing light on how to move from academia to industry because any pathway is open to young talented students as you demonstrated each day.
We were so proud of what you accomplished, and to see you shine and motivate future generations of scientists with your passion! Today, we are equally immensely sad and angry that you cannot continue; this is unacceptable. Your LIVE family shares the sorrow and mourning of your parents and relatives, and we send them all our support.
Among your many talents, you played the violin and music was such an important part of your life that you wanted to let us know in your essay, written to join the LIVE master; it is with this excerpt and your own words that we keep you with us:
“My heart pumps fast and I am breathing on its beat, as well as everyone is doing around, I have the feeling that we are also playing a “breathing symphony” underneath. I breathe again, and then it comes this smell, the smell of wood coming from the bowed string instruments as the resin in the hairs of the bow make that dust fly. Feelings are getting bigger and beyond, I feel any of us could make explode their minds so as to relief the intensity of what is being lived inside. It is the end; inspiration is over, and senses are not that sensitive anymore. Where has all this magic atmosphere gone?Diego, 2017.”
2025.09.28 – Prof. C. Delprat with the whole LIVE Family, Coordination and Staff across the world
Where has all this magic atmosphere gone?
In Memoriam to Diego Calzada Fraile (1995-2025)
The first star of the LIVE “Pasteur” promotion has passed away, struck by devastating cancer; he will continue to shine forever in our hearts.
Dear Diego,
Trainee at Institut Pasteur Paris in the “Epidemiology and Pathophysiology of Oncogenic Viruses Unit”, then at the National Centre for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC, Madrid) starting your experimental journey with your bachelor thesis on “A biosafe assay for HIV-1 microRNA expression and sorting into exosomes”, you graduated with an excellent Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry obtained at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2017.
We were fortunate to select you in 2017 and to benefit from your smart, gentle and dynamic spirit onboarding within the wonderful LIVE family. We had a lot of joy in contributing to your training during two years with your Pasteur classmates at the universities of Barcelona, Antwerp, Saint-Etienne and Lyon in the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master, Leading International Vaccinology Education – LIVE. With Bea, Dimitrios and Sultan, you organized the successful 2018 international Research Instructive Workshop to dream and make your classmates efficiently dream about their Life after LIVE. As part of your LIVE Master’s thesis, you studied the “Local immune response to the yellow fever 17D vaccine (Stamaril) and wild-type virus in non-human primates using immuno-histo-fluorescence and high-dimensional clustering analyses of flow cytometry data” under the supervisions of Dr Roger Le Grand and Dr Frédéric Martinon at CEA-IDMIT “Infectious Disease Models and Innovative Therapies” in France. You excelled and completed your Master’s degree at the top of your class in 2019.
Subsequently, you were awarded an INPhINIT Retaining PhD fellowship from “la Caixa” and conducted highly productive research (Calzada-Fraile D, et al. Immune synapse formation promotes lipid peroxidation and MHC-I upregulation in licensed dendritic cells for efficient priming of CD8+ T cells. Nat Commun. 2023) within the “Intercellular Communication in the Inflammatory Response group”, led by Professor Francisco Sánchez, at the National Centre for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC, Madrid). Always eager to learn and push boundaries, you defined yourself professionally simply as a “Team-player Immunologist” and became an exceptional one with your PhD defended in 2023.
In 2023, you pursued your journey as Scientist, working at BioNTech SE (Mainz, Germany) on the preclinical development of novel mRNA vaccine candidates for infectious diseases, driving the scientific strategy, developing novel assays for screening and contributing to the development of the technology via investigating their mechanism of action.
In parallel, you have also generously returned to Lyon on several occasions. You shared your science and motivated undergraduate (L3, Introduction à l’Infectiologie) as well as graduate (M2 LIVE) students. In 2024, you instilled them confidence about the value of their skills, also bringing light on how to move from academia to industry because any pathway is open to young talented students as you demonstrated each day.
We were so proud of what you accomplished, and to see you shine and motivate future generations of scientists with your passion! Today, we are equally immensely sad and angry that you cannot continue; this is unacceptable. Your LIVE family shares the sorrow and mourning of your parents and relatives, and we send them all our support.
Among your many talents, you played the violin and music was such an important part of your life that you wanted to let us know in your essay, written to join the LIVE master; it is with this excerpt and your own words that we keep you with us:
“My heart pumps fast and I am breathing on its beat, as well as everyone is doing around, I have the feeling that we are also playing a “breathing symphony” underneath. I breathe again, and then it comes this smell, the smell of wood coming from the bowed string instruments as the resin in the hairs of the bow make that dust fly. Feelings are getting bigger and beyond, I feel any of us could make explode their minds so as to relief the intensity of what is being lived inside. It is the end; inspiration is over, and senses are not that sensitive anymore. Where has all this magic atmosphere gone? Diego, 2017.”
2025.09.28 – Prof. C. Delprat with the whole LIVE Family, Coordination and Staff across the world
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