University of Connecticut School of Medicine

I received my BS from Yale University and my MD from the University of California, San Francisco. I trained in internal medicine at UPenn and in Infectious Diseases at UCLA. My love affair with syphilis research began during my ID fellowship and postdoctoral research fellowship at UCLA. In 1986 I joined the faculty at UT Southwestern Medical Center, where I tackled the mysteries of the Treponema pallidum outer membrane, and relocated to UConn Health in 1999 where I founded the Spirochete Research Laboratories (SRLs). Now in its 26th year, the Spirochete Research Laboratories have grown to become a fully integrated collaboration between investigators in the Departments of Pediatrics and Medicine. Syphilis research in the SRLs centers on the outer membrane proteins of Treponema pallidum, the syphilis spirochete, as vaccine candidates and virulence determinants. Our syphilis research utilizes a variety of methodologies including genomics, recombinant protein expression and engineering, and, most recently, in vitro cultivation of T. pallidum. NIH-funded international collaborations in regions where syphilis is hyper-endemic have enabled us to pursue translational genomics-based research centered on understanding how T. pallidum persists within at-risk populations. Our Lyme disease research centers on the genetic regulatory programs that enable Borrelia burgdorferi to transit between its arthropod (tick) vector and mammalian reservoir host; the ability of Lyme disease spirochetes to sustain themselves in nature creates their threat to public and veterinary health. The centerpiece of this research is our development of methodologies for studying gene regulation by Borrelia burgdorferi in real-host environments as opposed to in vitro cultivation.