Justin D. Radolf MD

Justin Radolf received his B.S. degree in biology from Yale University in 1975. He attended medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, graduating in 1979. He was a resident in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1982. As a fellow in infectious diseases at UCLA (1982-1986), he began his research career in spirochetology, specifically studying Treponema pallidum, the cause of syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease. His efforts to use recombinant DNA to identify outer membrane proteins of T. pallidum led to the discovery of the unique protein-deficient outer membrane of T. pallidum. Following their fellowship, he continued his spirochete research as a faculty member at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. In the late 1980s, as Lyme disease began to emerge as an important public health problem, Radolf expanded his research program to include Borrelia burgdorferi, the cause of Lyme disease, the most prevalent arthropod-borne pathogen in the United States. In 1999, he relocated to UConn Health where he is currently a professor of medicine, pediatrics, genetics, and developmental biology. He is an author or co-author on more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and more than 30 chapters or reviews. His spirochete research has been continuously funded by the NIH since 1988.