Joseph Vinetz, MD, FACP, FIDSA, FASTMH, BS
Cards
About
Titles
Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases), Anthropology, and Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases)
Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global HealthBiography
Dr. Vinetz is Professor of Medicine in the Section of Infectious Diseases. He is also Research Professor in the Faculty of Sciences and Laboratory of Research and Development at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, and Associated Investigator of the Alexander von Humboldt Institute of Tropical Medicine at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, in Lima, Peru. He received his Bachelor of Science from Yale University and received his M.D. from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, during which time he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Physician Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institutes of Health. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians, and an elected Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. His research in global health and infectious diseases is problem-based and applies fundamental laboratory approaches. This work is based in his lab at Yale and in the field in Peru, Brazil, and Sri Lanka. His scholarship focuses on public health issues of highest consequence, while simultaneously pursuing basic and translational research from the bench to the bedside. His research has been continuously funded by the NIH since 2001, and by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Rockefeller Brothers Fund/Culpeper Scholarship, the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Americas Foundation, with an expanding, internationally-based portfolio.
Appointments
Infectious Diseases
ProfessorPrimaryEpidemiology of Microbial Diseases
ProfessorSecondary
Other Departments & Organizations
- Blue College Affiliates
- Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases
- Infectious Diseases
- Internal Medicine
- Microbiology
- Yale Combined Program in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS)
- Yale Institute for Global Health
- Yale Medicine
- Yale School of Public Health
Education & Training
- Fellow
- Johns Hopkins Hospital (1998)
- Postdoctoral Fellow
- National Institutes of Health (1998)
- Resident
- Johns Hopkins Hospital (1994)
- MD
- University of California San Diego, Medicine (1991)
Research
Overview
Current projects:
1. Malaria: We are studying the fundamental biology of malaria resilience in the Amazon. Based in our field laboratories in Iquitos, Peru (in collaboration with Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia), in Mâncio Lima, Brazil (in collaboration with Universidade de São Paulo) and in Porto Velho, Brazil (in collaboration with FioCruz and the University of Massachusetts), we characterize human populations of malaria transmission reservoirs (epidemiology); study the molecular ecology and transmission biology of human-Anopheles interactions; and investigate molecular and cellular mechanisms of non-sterilizing clinical immunity to malaria caused by P. vivax and P. falciparum.
2. Mechanisms of Plasmodium-mosquito interactions. We study the molecular basis of Plasmodium ookinete-mosquito midgut interactions, with current projects focusing on cellular and molecular mechanisms by which ookinetes form secretory organelles, micronemes, and the composition of a newly discovered macromolecular complex mediating midgut invasion. We study ookinetes using animal models of malaria, rodent model P. berghei and avian model, P. gallinaceum, and of human parasites, P. vivax and P. falciparum. We also produce P. vivax sporozoites for use in fundamental experimental studies of liver stage infection including mechanisms of hypnozoite formation (the latent forms), towards new vaccine and drug interventions.
3. Leptospira and Leptospirosis. Laboratories at Yale, in Peru (Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia) and in Sri Lanka (Rajarata University of Sri Lanka) collaborate on multidisciplinary studies of Leptospira and leptospirosis, focused on clinical field studies of acute undifferentiated febrile illness to characterize epidemiological and clinical features of leptospirosis. We translate these field studies towards the development and deployment of new novel molecular and point-of-care diagnostic tests, by obtaining primary isolates of Leptospira that inform us about regionally-specific strains, and do so by carrying out genomic analysis of these isolates for molecular epidemiological studies, biochemical and immunological analysis, and vaccine development, all towards identifying new approaches to the control and elimination of leptospirosis, a bacterial zoonosis of high global impact.
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
Academic Achievements and Community Involvement
Clinical Care
Overview
Joseph Vinetz, MD, is an expert in general infectious diseases with special expertise in tropical medicine and traveler's health.
“Patients teach us how to learn new ways to address the diseases and conditions important to them, whether here at home or anywhere in the world,” Dr. Vinetz says.
In addition to treating patients, Dr. Vinetz conducts research to find new ways to help patients. “Every day I come to work ready to use my laboratory to attack real-world problems with new strategies based on innovative science,” he says. “Being a physician-scientist allows me to learn about important clinical problems from patients.”
Dr. Vinetz is also a clinical instructor at Yale School of Medicine. “Working with Yale medical students, residents, and fellows allows me to pass on my knowledge to the next generation and to learn from them about new ways of thinking about people suffering from disease,” he says.
Clinical Specialties
Board Certifications
Infectious Disease
- Certification Organization
- AB of Internal Medicine
- Original Certification Date
- 1996
Internal Medicine
- Certification Organization
- AB of Internal Medicine
- Original Certification Date
- 1994
Yale Medicine News
Links & Media
Media
Context of hyperendemic leptospirosis in Iquitos, Peru
Leptospirosis is hyper endemic in the Peruvian Amazon, facilitated by hot, humid weather, and poverty, which bring humans and animal sources of infection into proximity.Let's Avoid Malaria
Perspective on the human impact of malaria from the Peruvian Amazon
News
- November 06, 2023
Finding a Pathway to a Human Leptospirosis Vaccine
- October 06, 2023Source: Research Features
Leptospirosis: Genomics and the Road to Vaccination
- May 15, 2023
Faculty Network Spotlight: MalarYale
- December 15, 2022
An Improved Culture-Independent qPCR Assay to Identify Leptospira