Richard Frothingham is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center with a dual appointment in Molecular Genetics and Microbiology. He majored in Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a National Merit Scholar and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Dr. Frothingham graduated from medical school at Duke, and completed a residency in Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Rochester. He spent three years as a medical missionary in Haiti before returning to Duke for an Infectious Disease fellowship. He currently conducts vaccine research and cares for patients with HIV.

 

Frothingham has conducted laboratory and animal research with hazardous microbes for over 15 years. Dr. Frothingham trained in Ken Wilson’s laboratory, where he was a member of the first team to identify the cause of Whipple’s disease. Frothingham used DNA sequence analysis to identify a distinct group of Mycabacteriuni avium strains associated with disseminated disease in AIDS patients.  Frothingham developed a method for tuberculosis strain typing based on variable numbers of tandem repeats. A modified version of this method is currently used by the CDC to track the transmission of tuberculosis in the US. In addition to multiple publications on tuberculosis, Frothingham has published articles using Mycobacterium avium, Mycobacterium paratuberculosis, cytomegalovirus, and Yersinia pestis in animal models.

 

Dr. Frothingham directs the Regional Biocontainment Laboratory at Duke (RBL).  This NIH-funded laboratory was designed to support safe and efficient research to develop drugs, diagnostics and vaccines for emerging infections and biological threats. DHVI Shared Resources located in the RBL provide services, facilities, and equipment to the regional scientific community. These include Aerobiology, Animal Models, in vivo Imaging, Immune Monitoring, Flow Cytometry and Select Agents.  Dr. Frothingham directs the BSL3 Aerobiology and Animal Models Core for the Southeast Regional Center of Excellence for Emerging Infections and Biodefense (SERCEB).

 

As director of the DHVI Laboratory of Plague Pathogenesis, Frothingham focuses his research on Yersinia pestis, the bacterial cause of bubonic and pneumonic plague. The goals of the lab are (1) to define specific protective mechanisms that are a part of the host response to plague, and (2) to use this information to develop better drugs and vaccines for plague. Frothingham and colleagues recently identified an immune modulator approved by the FDA for use in humans that protects against plague in a murine model.