Molecular Microbiology & Immunology and Infectious Diseases
W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public Health
Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine
Arturo Casadevall is a microbiologist and immunologist who studies how microbes cause disease and how hosts protect themselves against microbes. His work aims to protect people from harm caused by new pathogens and resistant organisms and by compromised immune systems.
Casadevall’s research is focused on fungal and bacterial pathogenesis—the origination and development of disease—and basic immunology of antibody structure-function. He has made major contributions to our understanding of fungal pathogenesis and how fungi evade the host immune response, and has developed novel therapeutic strategies for a variety of human diseases including melanoma and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. His team is currently engaged in understanding how hosts defend against the fungus Cryptococcus neoformans, a ubiquitous environmental microbe that is a frequent cause of disease in individuals with impaired immunity. Casadevall is also known for his research on scientific misconduct, which has focused on fraudulent results published in journals, problems with the funding pipeline, the rise in retractions, and dual use research.
Casadevall joined Johns Hopkins University as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in 2015 from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.