Hilda Villegas Castrejón

Hilda Villegas Castrejón (26 February 1931 – 1 August 2012) was a Mexican surgeon and a pioneer in electron microscopy. She was a member of the Mexican Academy of Surgery.

Biography Hilda's father, Andrés Villegas Reyes, was a medical surgeon graduated from "Escuela Medico Militar (S.D.N.)" and radiologist. She graduated in 1955 as a medical surgeon from the Faculty of Medicine of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She earned a pathology fellowship at Presbyterian / St. Luke's Medical Center and Columbus Hospital in Chicago. She earned a doctorate in medical sciences from the Free University of Berlin. Villegas was a tenured professor at the UNAM School of Medicine.

Selected works Villegas participated in some 70 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Villegas Castrejón, H., Carrillo Farga, J., Paredes, Y., Barrón, A., & Karchmer K, S. (1994). Ultrastructural study of placentas in HIV-positive women. Ginecol. obstet. Méx, 136–42. Villegas Castrejón, H., González Jiménez, MA, Fuentes García, S., Casanova Román, G., Beltrán Zúñiga, M., & Flores Rivera, E. (1995). Gardnerella vaginalis infection in heterosexual couples: ultrastructural study in desquamation cells of the stratified epithelium. Ginecol. obstet. Méx, 139–46. Villegas Castrejón, H., Paredes Vivas, Y., Flores Rivera, E., Gorbea Robles, MDC, & Arredondo García, JL (1996). Comparative study of the placenta of HIV-positive mothers. Ultrastructural analysis. Ginecol. obstet. Méx, 167–76. Villegas-Castrejón, H., Hernández-Pérez, AD, Peralta, S., Vázquez-Escamilla, J., & Reyes-Marín, B. (2006). Diagnosis of Krabbe leukodystrophy by transmission electron microscopy. Report of a patient. Surgery and Surgeons, 74 (6), 477–481. García-Pérez, BE, De la Cruz-López, JJ, Castañeda-Sánchez, JI, Muñoz-Duarte, AR, Hernández-Pérez, AD, Villegas-Castrejón, H.... & Luna-Herrera, J. ( 2012). Macropinocytosis is responsible for the uptake of pathogenic and non-pathogenic mycobacteria by B lymphocytes (Raji cells). BMC microbiology, 12 (1), 1–14.