Lyme Disease Research Team
Lyme Disease Team
Justin Radolf, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics, Molecular Biology and Biophysics, Genetics and Genome Sciences, and Immunology
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 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 professor of medicine, pediatrics, and genetics and developmental biology. He is an author or co-author on more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and more than 30 chapters or review. His spirochete research has been continuously funded by the NIH since 1988.
Melissa Caimano, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Medicine
Melissa Caimano received a B.S. degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1989. She attended graduate school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham doing her thesis work on the genetic elements involved in Streptococcus pneumoniae capsule biosynthesis. In 1996, Caimano began a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Justin Radolf at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, relocating to the University of Connecticut in 1999. Her work has focused primarily on the regulatory pathways and molecular mechanisms underlying mammalian host adaptation and maintenance of Borrelia burgdorferi within its natural enzootic cycle. Most notably, these studies have led to the discovery that the alternate sigma factor RpoS plays a critical role in the down-regulation, as well as up-regulation, of borrelial genes specifically in response to mammalian host signals. She has published more than 46 peer-reviewed articles on microbial pathogenesis and related areas in high impact journals. Her work examining the interaction between the Lyme disease spirochete and its arthropod vector is supported by grants awarded to her by the National Research Fund for Tick-Borne Diseases (NRFTD) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH/NIAID). Caimano currently is an associate professor in the UConn Health Department of Medicine. She also has served on the Editorial Board of Infection and Immunity since 2006.
André Alex Grassmann, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics
André received his B.S. degree in Biological Sciences in 2009 from the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. Since his undergraduate research, André has studied pathogenic Leptospira and leptospirosis. He received his M.S. degree in 2011 and his Ph.D. in 2015, both from UFPel Biotechnology School. In 2013, he was awarded a one-year Science without Borders fellowship from the Brazilian government and joined Drs. Caimano and Radolf to investigate differential gene expression by Leptospira interrogans within the mammalian host to identify potential novel vaccine targets. After two years of postdoctoral research in Brazil, he returned to the Radolf and Caimano lab in 2017 to continue studying gene regulation in Leptospira during host infection. In 2019, André expanded his research to Borrelia burgdorferi, focusing on gene regulation in response to host- and vector-specific cues, particularly the convergence of c-di-GMP– and PlzA-dependent signaling with the RpoS pathway. In 2022, he was promoted to Instructor, and since 2024 he has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine. His current research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of B. burgdorferi gene regulation during the tick–mammal infectious cycle, which represents his major area of investigation. In addition, his research addresses pathogenesis and vaccine development against Treponema pallidum (syphilis) and Leptospira interrogans (leptospirosis).
Melissa McLain, M.S., Research Assistant II
Melissa "Mel" McLain received her B.A. in Biology from Assumption College (Worcester, MA) in 2014 and earned her M.S. in Biomolecular Science from Central Connecticut State University in 2018, where she conducted thesis research on dopamine regulation of the ASH receptor in Caenorhabditis elegans. She joined the Spirochete Research Laboratory in 2018 and was promoted to Research Assistant II in 2024. Mel is integral to the lab’s bench operations, where she supports investigations into Borrelia burgdorferi pathogenesis and gene regulation.