DUKE MYCOLOGY
RESEARCH UNIT
Faculty and Research
J. Andrew Alspaugh, MD
Associate Professor
Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases
lab members • publications • website
Biography:
Andy Alspaugh received his A.B. in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina
in 1987. During this time, he worked in the laboratory of Patricia Pukkila where he
was first exposed to the genetics and molecular biology of fungi with the model
basidiomycete Coprinus cinereus. He attended Duke University School of Medicine
and received his M.D. degree in 1991. During medical school, he spent one year in the
laboratory of Don Granger, studying immune responses to the human fungal pathogen
Cryptococcus neoformans. The Granger lab had previously demonstrated that murine
macrophages use nitric oxide to inhibit the growth of C. neoformans. Dr. Alspaugh
developed a cell-free model system using chemically-generated nitrogen oxides to mimic
the fungicidal activity of macrophages and to further characterize the effect of nitric
oxide on fungal cells.
From 1991-1995, Dr. Alspaugh trained in Internal Medicine at Vanderbilt University. He
was the Chief Resident in Medicine at the Nashville VA Medical Center from 1994-1995. After
this time, he returned to Duke University for his subspecialty training in Infectious
Diseases. He joined the laboratory of Joseph Heitman in 1996 and began to study signaling
pathways regulating pathogenesis in Cryptococcus neoformans.
Dr. Alspaugh joined the faculty of the Department of Medicine and Division of Infectious
Diseases at Duke University Medical Center in 1998. He also has a secondary appointment in
the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, and he is a member of the University
Program in Genetics. He received the Merck Young Investigator Award in Medical Mycology
through the Infectious Diseases Society of America in 2000. He also received a Burroughs
Wellcome Fund New Investigator Award in Molecular Pathogenic Mycology in 2001. He recently
received an R01 grant from the NIAID to continue his studies on the role of the Ras signaling
pathway in microbial development and pathogenesis. The focus of Dr. Alspaugh's research is to
further define the molecular mechanisms of microbial pathogenesis. He is especially interested
in defining conserved signal transduction pathways that have been co-opted by microbial
pathogens to enable their pathogenic potential. Dr. Alspaugh also serves as an editor for the journal PLoS One, a new open access journal from the Public Library of Science.
