Above, caption with list of names and description of event. At left, Alan Rothman in a URI(?) lab, and a Dengue virus magnified.
the quest to find a vaccine for dengue? And how The mystery Rothman is trying to crack involves dengue fever, and the National Institutes of Health did he land at iCubed (the Institute for Immunology and Informatics) at URI? (NIH) is betting heavily on his research, to the tune Infectious diseases (ID) was an area Rothman of more than $21 million in two separate grants studied first during his training at the Medical of $10 million and $11.4 million awarded College of Virginia, where in 2013 alone—an all-time high for he did his residency after URI research. graduating from Boston Dengue fever, a mosquitoIMMUNOLOGY & INFORMATICS University Medical School. borne viral hemorrhagic disease, To improve human and An ID fellowship at the is a cousin to West Nile VIDEO | URI.EDU/QUADANGLES University of MassachuVirus and is found largely animal health by applying setts Medical School in in Thailand, the Philippines, the power of immunomics Worcester followed. JoinVietnam, Central and South ing one of the only labs in America, and the Caribbean. to the design of better the country at that time Cases have been reported in vaccines, diagnostics, working on the immune Florida and the Gulf Coast and therapeutics. system’s response to denof the United States, and there gue, Rothman was hooked. was famously an outbreak as immunome.org “ID is the most interestfar north as Philadelphia. Rothman ing area of medicine,” Rothman states emphatilikens dengue, also known as breakbone fever, cally. “New infectious diseases are developing to a horrible flu—“You feel absolutely miserable, like you are going to die, but you don’t.” Rothman’s all the time. The human body stays the same, but research focuses on virological and immunological microbes continue to evolve and develop resistance to antiretroviral drugs.” When he started events in acute dengue infection and their relahis research in 1987, Rothman notes, only a tionship to the development of viral hemorrhagic handful of labs were studying the immunology fever syndrome. of dengue; now, dozens of labs are immersed So how did a promising young medical student in this work. from Brooklyn, N.Y., become a lead researcher in
Above: Professor Rothman in his lab with U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, and U.S. Rep. James Langevin, at the August 5, 2013, announcement of his $11.4 million grant from the NIH.
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