Steven Wolinsky, MD

Samuel J. Sackett Professor of Medicine
Division Chief of Infectious Diseases
Feinberg School of Medicine

Research Interests:
The laboratory of Dr. Wolinsky focuses on the evolutionary mechanisms underlying host-pathogen interactions, and their role in the emergence, spread, and containment of infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS. The work seeks to understand how viral genetic variation, driven by host immunity and transmission bottlenecks, affects HIV infection dynamics and epidemic behavior. This connection is central to the evolution of virulence and drug resistance, and to vaccine design.

Selected Publications:
Worobey, M., Gemmel, M., Teuwen, D. E., Haselkorn, T., Kunstman, K., Bunce, M., Muyembe, J. J., Kabongo, J. M., Kalengayi, R. M., Van Marck, E. et al. (2008). Direct evidence of extensive diversity of HIV-1 in Kinshasa by 1960. Nature 455, 661-4.

Barouch, D. H., Powers, J., Truitt, D. M., Kishko, M. G., Arthur, J. C., Peyerl, F. W., Kuroda, M. J., Gorgone, D. A., Lifton, M. A., Lord, C. I. et al. (2005). Dynamic immune responses maintain cytotoxic T lymphocyte epitope mutations in transmitted simian immunodeficiency virus variants. Nat Immunol 6, 247-52.

Trachtenberg, E, Korber B, Sollars C, Kepler T, Hraber PT, Hayes E, Funkhouser R, Fugate M, Theiler J, Hsu M, Kunstman K, Wu S, Phair J, Erlich H, and Wolinsky S. (2003). HLA-A and HLA-B supertype alleles predict human immunodeficiency virus disease progression rate. Nature Medicin 7, 928-35

Korber, B., Muldoon, M., Theiler, J., Gao, F., Gupta, R., Lapedes, A., Hahn, B. H., Wolinsky, S. and Bhattacharya, T. (2000). Timing the ancestor of the HIV-1 pandemic strains. Science 288, 1789-96.

Wolinsky, S. M., Korber, B. T., Neumann, A. U., Daniels, M., Kunstman, K. J., Whetsell, A. J., Furtado, M. R., Cao, Y., Ho, D. D. and Safrit, J. T. (1996). Adaptive evolution of human immunodeficiency virus-type 1 during the natural course of infection. Science 272, 537-42.