Arturo Casadevall
Dr. Arturo Casadevall speaking about "Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in the Research of Health and Medicine" at the Osler Medical Symposium, held at Johns Hopkins University.
Born
Arturo Casadevall

1957
Sancti Spíritus, Cuba
NationalityAmerican
Alma materQueens College, City University of New York (B.A.)
New York University(M.S., Ph.D., M.D.)
Known forFungal and bacterial pathogenesis
Setosphaeria rostrata
Cryptococcus neoformans
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Bacillus anthracis
mBio
AwardsBloomberg Distinguished Professorships (2015)
NIH Merit Award (2007)
AAAS Fellow (2006)
Scientific career
FieldsMicrobiology
Immunology
Infectious Diseases
InstitutionsJohns Hopkins University
Doctoral advisorLoren A. Day
WebsiteFaculty Webpage

Arturo Casadevall is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and the Alfred and Jill Sommer Professor and Chair of the W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.[1] He is an internationally recognized expert in infectious disease research, with a focus on fungal and bacterial pathogenesis and basic immunology of antibody structure-function. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.[2]

Biography

Arturo Casadevall was born in Sancti Spíritus, Cuba in 1957. He moved to Elmhurst, Queens, New York City in 1968 and became a U.S. citizen in 1976. Prior to his career in medicine, Casadevall worked at McDonald's for 4 years and later as a bank teller.[3] Casadevall received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry from Queens College, City University of New York in 1979, and his M.S. and Ph.D in Biochemistry from New York University in 1983 and 1984.[4] He then received his M.D. from New York University in 1985. Casadevall completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at the Bellevue Hospital Center, and a fellowship in infectious diseases at the Montefiore Medical Center of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Under the guidance of Matthew D. Scharff, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cell biology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine from 1989 to 1991.[5]

In 1992, he accepted an assistant professorship in medicine and microbiology & immunology at Albert Einstein. In 2000, he became the director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Montefiore Medical Center and rose to the rank of full professor by 2001.[5] In 2002, he was named the Selma and Jacques Mitrani Professor in Biomedical Research. In 2006, he became the Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and was named the Leo and Julia Forchheimer Professor of Microbiology Immunology. He is board-certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in the subspecialty of infectious diseases until 2023.

Until July 2009, Dr. Casadevall served as an editor of the ASM journal Infection and Immunity and continues to serve on the editorial boards of the Journal of Infectious Diseases and the Journal of Experimental Medicine.[4] He is also the founding Editor in Chief of mBio, the first open access general journal of the American Society for Microbiology.[5] He served as a member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity from 2005 to 2014. Casadevall was also a commissioner for the National Forensic Commission of the United States Department of Justice from 2015 to 2017.[6]

In March 2015, Casadevall was named a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University for his accomplishments as an interdisciplinary researcher and excellence in teaching.[7][8] The Bloomberg Distinguished Professorship program was established in 2013 by a gift from Michael Bloomberg.[9][10] Casadevall holds appointments in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine’s Department of Infectious Diseases.[11][12] He also serves as the Alfred and Jill Sommer Professor and Chair of the W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2015. Casadevall is passionate about improving the doctoral curriculum, stating that he wants to “develop a program of putting the 'Ph' [philosophy] back into 'PhD’ [...] Hopkins reformed medical education 100 years ago, and now we can experiment with creating better ways of training scientists.”[12]

Casadevall is profiled in the last chapter of Range by David Epstein, a book arguing against specialization.[13] Epstein posits that Casadevall's early life experiences, including working odd jobs unrelated to medicine, contributed to his later success.[3]

Awards and distinctions

Casadevall’s groundbreaking work in the field of infectious diseases has been recognized by many, including the National Institutes of Health, which presented him with a Merit Award in 2007.[14] He received several distinguished awards, including the Alumni Achievement Award in Basic Science from New York University, the Rhoda Benham Award of the Medical Mycological Society of the Americas, the Kass Lecture from the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the ASM Founders Distinguished Service Award from the American Society for Microbiology.[15][16]

In 2001, Casadevall received the Samuel M. Rosen outstanding teacher award and in 2008 he was recognized the American Society for Microbiology with the William Hinton Award for “outstanding contributions toward fostering the research training of underrepresented minorities in microbiology.”[5][14] ASM also notes that Casadevall was the first Hispanic Department Chair at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and has “provided exemplary training and mentoring to a significant number of minority scientists, and himself served as a role model of success.”[5]

He has served as President of the Medical Mycology Society of America, Chair of American Society for Microbiology Division F, Chair of the American Society for Microbiology Career Development Committee, and Co-Chair of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Board of Scientific Counselors, and currently serves on the Scientific Council of the Pasteur Institute.[17] He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, American College of Physicians and the Association of American Physicians, and was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology.[5] In 2014, he became an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and in 2017, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[18] In 2022, he was elected to National Academy of Sciences.[2]

Research

Bridging the fields of microbiology and immunology, Casadevall's research is focused on fungal and bacterial pathogenesis and basic immunology of antibody structure-function. He has defined much of what is known about fungal pathogenesis and how fungi such as Cryptococcus neoformans evade the host immune response.[19] Fungal infections are particularly dangerous in immunocompromised individuals such as cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, making this work highly significant. With his collaborator Dr. Ekaterina (Kate) Dadachova, he pioneered the use of radioimmunotherapeutic strategies for the control of systemic fungal and other infections. During the course of his studies, he noted that certain fungi were radioresistant and worked to develop novel therapeutic strategies for a variety of human diseases including melanoma and infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis. He holds several active patents on these approaches.

Casadevall has a long record of outstanding scholarly and leadership contributions. His lab has studied host-microbe interactions with Cryptococcus neoformans, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and Bacillus anthracis, with a focus on microbial pathogenesis and mechanisms of antibody action. His lab established that humoral immunity could protect against intracellular pathogens, demonstrated that Cryptococcus neoformans was a facultative intracellular pathogen, and suggested that virulence in environmental fungi was selected by amoeba predators, a hypothesis dubbed "accidental virulence".[20] Jointly with British biologist Robin May,[21] his group were the first to observe non-lytic expulsion, or vomocytosis, of intracellular fungi.[22] Subsequently, with Kirsten Nielsen[23] at the University of Minnesota, he characterized the ability of cryptococci to form "giant" or "titan" cells in vivo,[24] unusually large cells that help drive persistent infections. His lab continues to work on fungal and bacterial pathogenesis.

Together with Liise-anne Pirofski, he proposed the ‘Damage-Response Framework’ of microbial pathogenesis, a new synthesis that shifted the emphasis away from focusing on microbes as pathogens, commensals, opportunists to the outcome of host-pathogen interactions.[25][26][27][28] The damage-response framework was the first theory of microbial pathogenesis to incorporate the contributions of both the host and the pathogen and refocused attention into the outcome of the interaction. From the view of the damage-response framework there are no pathogens, commensals, symbionts, etc., but only microbes and their hosts, which interact to produce the states of pathogenesis, commensalism, symbiosis, indifference, etc.[29]

In addition, Casadevall, in collaboration with Dr. Ferric C. Fang, has been constructive shaping the nations approach to science, scientific misconduct,[30][31] and promotion of women and underrepresented minorities.[32][33] Among his own trainees, nearly half are members of underrepresented minority groups and more than half are women.[14] With a focus on American Society for Microbiology events, Casadevall has been active in creating gender balance among speakers at conferences.[34][35] Along these lines, he stated: "When you have an underrepresentation of women as speakers and many panel discussions made up only of male researchers, you're sending the message that perhaps the field is not welcoming to women. That isn't the message we want to send."[36] His research on scientific misconduct has focused on fraudulent results published in journals and the subsequent rates of retraction.[37] In addition, his views on and analysis of topics ranging from problems with the funding pipeline to the rise in retractions in journals to the complex ethics of dual use research are widely sought by premier journals[38] and media outlets.[39]

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Casadevall investigated the use of antibody-containing blood serum from patients who have recovered from the virus as a measure to help until a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available.[40] These antibodies are produced as part of the body's natural immune response, and bind to and neutralize the virus. A transfusion of blood containing these antibodies boosts the immunity of newly infected patients or people at risk of contracting the disease.[41] Such infusions have been successfully implemented in past outbreaks, such as the SARS Epidemic, 1918 Flu Pandemic, and an outbreak of measles in 1934.[42][43]

Publications

He has published more than 746 papers and 33 book chapters, largely in the fields of immunology and microbiology, genetics and molecular biology, biochemistry, and medicine, and more recently scientific culture and competition. Casadevall has more than 46,000 citations in Google Scholar and an h-index of 113.[44]

Books
  • 2023, Thinking about Science: Good Science, Bad Science, and How to Make It Better. with co-author Ferric C. Fang, ASM Press.
  • 2011, Cryptococcus: from human pathogen to model yeast. with co-editors J. Heitman, T.R. Kozel, KJ Kwon-Chung, and JR Perfect, ASM Press.
  • 1998, Cryptococcus neoformans. with co-author John R. Perfect, ASM Press.
Highly Cited Articles[44]
  • 2020, with Liise-anne Pirofski, The convalescent sera option for containing COVID-19, in: The Journal of Clinical Investigation. Vol. 130, nº 4; 1545–1548.
  • 2015, with Lisa Brown, Julie M Wolf, Rafael Prados-Rosales, Through the wall: extracellular vesicles in Gram-positive bacteria, mycobacteria and fungi, in: Nature Reviews Microbiology. Vol. 13, nº 10; 620–630.
  • 2012, with JM Bardeen, JR Bond, and N Kaiser, Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications, in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 109, nº 42; 17028–17033.
  • 2003, with Joshua D Nosanchuk. The contribution of melanin to microbial pathogenesis , in: Cellular Microbiology. Vol. 5, nº 4; 203–223.
  • 2002, with John R Perfect. Cryptococcosis, in: Infectious disease clinics of North America. Vol. 16, nº 4; 837–874.
  • 2001, with JN Steenbergen and HA Shuman. Cryptococcus neoformans interactions with amoebae suggest an explanation for its virulence and intracellular pathogenic strategy in macrophages, in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 98, nº 26; 15245–15250.
  • 2000, with Gary M Cox, Jean Mukherjee, Garry T Cole, and John R Perfect. Urease as a virulence factor in experimental cryptococcosis, in: Infection and Immunity. Vol. 68, nº 2; 443–448.
  • 1999, with Sarah P Franzot and Ira F Salkin. Cryptococcus neoformans var. grubii: separate varietal status for Cryptococcus neoformans serotype A isolates, in: Journal of Clinical Microbiology. Vol. 37, nº 3; 838–840.
  • 1999, with Liise-anne Pirofski, Host-pathogen interactions: redefining the basic concepts of virulence and pathogenicity , in: Infection and Immunity. Vol. 67, nº 8; 3703–3713.

References

  1. ↑ Brooks, Kelly "Johns Hopkins names four new Bloomberg Distinguished Professors", JHU Hub, Baltimore, 30 March 2015. Retrieved on 5 August 2015.
  2. 1 2 "2022 NAS Election".
  3. 1 2 Akst, Daniel. "The case for general excellence". strategy+business. Retrieved 2022-10-07.
  4. 1 2 "mBio Professional Profile". Archived from the original on 2011-10-02. Retrieved 2015-08-05.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "ASM Arturo Casadevall, M.D., Ph.D." Archived from the original on 2016-02-22. Retrieved 2015-08-05.
  6. ↑ "Members | NCFS | Department of Justice". www.justice.gov. 2014-08-27. Retrieved 2018-05-22.
  7. ↑ "Michael R. Bloomberg commits $350 million to Johns Hopkins for transformational academic initiative". 2013-01-26.
  8. ↑ Anderson, Nick. "Bloomberg pledges $350 million to Johns Hopkins University", The Washington Post, Washington, D.C., 23 January 2013. Retrieved on 12 March 2015.
  9. ↑ Barbaro, Michael. "$1.1 Billion in Thanks From Bloomberg to Johns Hopkins", The New York Times, New York, 26 January 2013. Retrieved on 1 March 2015.
  10. ↑ "Michael R. Bloomberg Commits $350 Million to Johns Hopkins for Transformational Academic Initiative 2013".
  11. ↑ "Arturo Casadevall Faculty Page". Retrieved 2015-08-05.
  12. 1 2 Brooks, Kelly "Johns Hopkins names four new Bloomberg Distinguished Professors", JHU Hub, Baltimore, 30 March 2015. Retrieved on 27 July 2015.
  13. ↑ Epstein, David [@DavidEpstein] (March 27, 2020). "I profiled Arturo Casadevall in the last chapter of Range, which is why I'm not so surprised that his interest in history has spawned an international collaboration" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 10 October 2022 – via Twitter.
  14. 1 2 3 "American Society for Microbiology honors Arturo Casadevall". Retrieved 2015-08-10.
  15. ↑ "Speaker Profile: Arturo Casadevall" (PDF). Retrieved 2015-08-10.
  16. ↑ "Arturo Casadevall, M.D., M.S., Ph.D., Professor of Medicine". Johns Hopkins Medicine. Retrieved 2021-05-03.
  17. ↑ "The E-newsletter of Einstein's MI Department, Summer 2013, Editors: Teresa DiLorenzo, Arturo Casadevall" (PDF). Retrieved 2015-08-05.
  18. ↑ "NAM Meet the Class of 2014". Retrieved 2015-08-05.
  19. ↑ "NIH Record: Casadevall Speaks on Origins of Microbial Virulence". Retrieved 2015-08-10.
  20. ↑ Casadevall, Arturo; Heitman, Joseph; Kozel, Thomas R.; Kwon-Chung, Kyung-J.; Perfect, John R., eds. (2011). Cryptococcus: from human pathogen to model yeast (1st ed.). ASM Press. ISBN 978-1555815011.
  21. ↑ Ma, H; Croudace, JE; Lammas, DA; May, RC (7 November 2006). "Expulsion of live pathogenic yeast by macrophages". Current Biology. 16 (21): 2156–60. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2006.09.032. PMID 17084701.
  22. ↑ Alvarez, M; Casadevall, A (7 November 2006). "Phagosome extrusion and host-cell survival after Cryptococcus neoformans phagocytosis by macrophages". Current Biology. 16 (21): 2161–5. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2006.09.061. PMID 17084702.
  23. ↑ Okagaki, LH; Strain, AK; Nielsen, JN; Charlier, C; Baltes, NJ; Chrétien, F; Heitman, J; Dromer, F; Nielsen, K (17 June 2010). "Cryptococcal cell morphology affects host cell interactions and pathogenicity". PLOS Pathogens. 6 (6): e1000953. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1000953. PMC 2887476. PMID 20585559.
  24. ↑ Zaragoza, O; García-Rodas, R; Nosanchuk, JD; Cuenca-Estrella, M; Rodríguez-Tudela, JL; Casadevall, A (17 June 2010). "Fungal cell gigantism during mammalian infection". PLOS Pathogens. 6 (6): e1000945. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1000945. PMC 2887474. PMID 20585557.
  25. ↑ Casadevall, Arturo; Pirofski, Liise-anne (2003). "The damage-response framework of microbial pathogenesis". Nature Reviews Microbiology. Macmillan Publishers Limited. 1 (1): 17–24. doi:10.1038/nrmicro732. PMC 7097162. PMID 15040176.
  26. ↑ Casadevall, Arturo; Pirofski, Liise-anne (2000). "Host-Pathogen Interactions: The basic concepts of microbial commensalism, colonization, infection, and disease". Infection and Immunity. American Society for Microbiology. 68 (12): 6511–6518. doi:10.1128/IAI.68.12.6511-6518.2000. PMC 97744. PMID 11083759.
  27. ↑ Casadevall, Arturo; Pirofski, Liise-anne (1999). "Host-pathogen interactions: redefining the basic concepts of virulence and pathogenicity". Infection and Immunity. American Society for Microbiology. 67 (8): 3703–3713. doi:10.1128/IAI.67.8.3703-3713.1999. PMC 96643. PMID 10417127.
  28. ↑ Casadevall, Arturo; Pirofski, Liise-anne (2001). "Host-pathogen interactions: the attributes of virulence". The Journal of Infectious Diseases. Oxford University Press. 184 (3): 337–344. doi:10.1086/322044. PMID 11443560.
  29. ↑ Pirofski, Liise-anne; Casadevall, Arturo (2012). "Q and A: What is a pathogen? A question that begs the point". BMC Biology. BioMed Central. 10 (6): 6. doi:10.1186/1741-7007-10-6. PMC 3269390. PMID 22293325.
  30. ↑ Fang, Ferric C.; Casadevall, Arturo (2013). "Why We Cheat". Scientific American. 24 (2): 30–37. doi:10.1038/scientificamericanmind0513-30. Retrieved 2015-08-10.
  31. ↑ Relman, David A.; Osterholm, Michael T.; Keim, Paul; Imperiale, Michael J.; Enquist, Lynn; Casadevall, Arturo (2014-02-28). "mBio: Redaction of Sensitive Data in the Publication of Dual Use Research of Concern". mBio. 5 (1): e00991-13. doi:10.1128/mBio.00991-13. PMC 3884058. PMID 24381302.
  32. ↑ "Science Careers: Countering gender bias at conferences". 2015-07-29. Retrieved 2015-08-10.
  33. ↑ "International Science Times: Gender Gap Among Scientists Could Be Fixed By Having More Women Organize Conferences". Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-08-10.
  34. ↑ Casadevall, Arturo; Handelsman, Jo (2014). "The Presence of Female Conveners Correlates with a Higher Proportion of Female Speakers at Scientific Symposia". mBio. 5 (1): e00846-13. doi:10.1128/mBio.00846-13. PMC 3884059. PMID 24399856.
  35. ↑ "Striking a Gender Balance Among Speakers at Scientific Conferences". 4 August 2015. Retrieved 2015-08-10.
  36. ↑ "Simple steps can lead to gender balance among speakers at scientific conferences". 2015-08-06. Retrieved 2015-08-10.
  37. ↑ "ASCB: Interview with Arturo Casadevall on Scientific Misconduct". Archived from the original on 2015-09-23. Retrieved 2015-08-10.
  38. ↑ Casadevall, A; Dermody, TS; Imperiale, MJ; Sandri-Goldin, RM; Shenk, T (2014). "On the Need for a National Board To Assess Dual Use Research of Concern". J. Virol. 88 (12): 6535–7. doi:10.1128/JVI.00875-14. PMC 4054389. PMID 24696484.
  39. ↑ Imperiale, M. J.; Casadevall, A. (2015). "PLOS Medicine: A New Synthesis for Dual Use Research of Concern". PLOS Medicine. 12 (4): e1001813. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001813. PMC 4397073. PMID 25874461.
  40. ↑ Casadevall, Arturo; Pirofski, Liise-anne (2020-03-13). "The convalescent sera option for containing COVID-19". The Journal of Clinical Investigation. 130 (4): 1545–1548. doi:10.1172/JCI138003. ISSN 0021-9738. PMC 7108922. PMID 32167489.
  41. ↑ Aspril, Joshua (13 March 2020). "Infectious Disease Experts Recommend Using Antibodies from COVID-19 Survivors as Stopgap Measure to Treat Patients and Protect Healthcare Workers". Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Retrieved 2020-03-18.
  42. ↑ Pearce, Katie (2020-03-13). "Antibodies from COVID-19 survivors could be used to treat patients, protect those at risk". The Hub. Retrieved 2020-03-18.
  43. ↑ Casadevall, Arturo (2020-02-27). "Opinion | How a Boy's Blood Stopped an Outbreak". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2020-03-18.
  44. 1 2 Google Scholar "Author: Arturo Casadevall", Google Scholar, 4 August 2015. Retrieved on 4 August 2015.
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