Mark Klempner practices infectious disease medicine and internal medicine in Boston, Massachusetts.
Mark S. Klempner, M.D. Dr. Mark Klempner serves as the Conrad Wesselhoeft Professor of Medicine and Professor of Microbiology at Boston University Medical Campus. In addition, Dr. Klempner serves as the Director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. Dr. Klempner graduated from Cornell Medical College where he was the recipient of the Teagle Scholarship asvaledictorian.
He continued his post doctoral internal medicine clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital followed by post doctoral infectious diseases clinical and research training at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD.
Dr. Klempner spent the next 20 years at Tufts Medical Center where he served as the Endicott Professor of Medicine, Vice Chairman for Scientific Affairs and Chairman of the New England Medical Center Research Council. He joined Boston University Medical Campus in 2001 to pursue his research interests and to promote collaborative biomedical research programs at Boston University and its sister academic medical center, Boston Medical Center.
Dr. Klempner’s research has elucidated host inflammatory responses to infecting microbes in the pathogenesis of several infectious diseases, and defined their clinical implications. His early basic research demonstrated that inflammatory cells secrete cytokines that amplify the inflammatory response, release reactive oxygen species and lysosomal contents, discovered proton and calcium ion regulating transporters in intracellular organelles and, through development of an engineered “reporter pathogen”, demonstrated that intraphagolysosomal changes in pH and [Ca++] were crucial to the pathogenesis of Staphylococcus aureus and Yesinia pestis infections.
He subsequently demonstrated that host plasminogen was the essential serine protease needed for tick transmission of Borellia burgdorferi. He translated these “bench” observations to the patient’s “bedside” by demonstrating that interruption of the cytokine autocrine loop was anti-inflammatory and that lysosomotropic antibiotics can eradicate persisting facultative intracellular bacterial infections (e.g S. aureus). He has pioneered studies on the emerging infectious disease, Lyme Disease, ranging from how the bacteria invades the tick vector, intermediate hosts and humans, to vaccine development against this disease, to studies on treatments for this infection.
Under Dr. Klempner’s leadership, Boston University was awarded a $141 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to build a research institute to study emerging infectious diseases. The focus of research is on basic science and translational studies leading to improved understanding of the pathogenesis of these infections, and development of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines for emerging infectious diseases.
Dr. Klempner is the author of over 260 scientific publications and a contributor to 17 books. He has been honored for his accomplishments by numerous awards and appointments.
He serves as Associate Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, is on the Board of Scientific Counselors of the NIH Clinical Center and was Chairman of the Subspecialty Board on Infectious Diseases of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), Board of Directors of the ABIM, President of the Association of Subspecialty Professors and member of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
He is the recipient of the Squibb and Abbott Awards from the Infectious Diseases Society of America, has been repeatedly cited as one of the Best Doctors in America, and was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians.
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Mark Klempner practices infectious disease medicine and internal medicine in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Klempner graduated with an MD 37 years ago.
Address & Contact Information:
720 Harrison Avenue
Boston, MA 02118
Research Conditions Related to Infectious Disease Medicine
HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Meningitis, Tuberculosis, West Nile Virus
State License:
Years Since Graduation:
37
Age:
64
Gender:
Male
Insurance Accepted:
Klempner Bio
Associate Provost for Research, Boston University Medical Campus
Conrad Wesselhoeft Professor of Medicine
Vice Chair for Research, Department of Medicine
Professor of Microbiology
Medical School: Cornell University Medical College
Residency training: Massachusetts General Hospital
Fellowship training: Laboratory of Clinical Investigation, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and National Naval Medical Center.
Dr. Klempner’s research includes investigations into the basic molecular biology and pathogenic mechanisms of the Lyme disease spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi, patient-based clinical research on prevention, diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease and novel molecular methods for detecting, identifying and quantifying microorganisms. Recently his laboratory has cloned and characterized the oligopeptide transport (permease) system in borrelia and is currently investigating how borrelia adapts its nutrient capture to the particular environments that the bacteria encounters (e.g. tick, mouse, human). Using in vitro and in vivo models Dr. Klempner’s laboratory has a longstanding interest in the molecular mechanisms of microbial invasion. His laboratory was the first to determine that the Lyme disease spirochete binds and utilizes host proteases in order to facilitate invasion. The laboratory is also studying the role of matrix metalloproteinases in the pathogenesis of Lyme disease. Dr. Klempner’s patient based studies focus in several areas ranging from diagnostic tests to vaccine protection to post-treatment chronic Lyme disease. He has studied novel diagnostic tests for Lyme disease which are based on conserved regions of a variable lipoprotein, participated in the evaluation of the highly effective recombinant OspA Lyme disease vaccine and has been a leader in clinical studies of patients with persisting symptoms following treatment for acute Lyme disease (so called post treatment chronic Lyme disease). With regard to the clinical studies on patients with post-treatment chronic Lyme disease the Klempner team demonstrated that 90 days of antibiotics were not better than placebo and that evidence of persisting borrelial infection could not be found. Recent studies have focused on defining genetic susceptibility to infection with Borrelia burgdorferi and possible relationships of HLA haplotypes with persisting symptoms.
As part of an NIH and NSBRI/NASA funded initiative in collaboration with investigators at the Photonics Center and the Department of Physics his laboratory has begun the development of a novel method for rapid detection and identification of microbial species in environmental and biological specimens. This method, known as surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), is an optical technique that uses scatter from an incident visible or near infrared laser to generate detailed vibrational spectra.
In October 2003, Dr. Klempner became the Principal Investigator of a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to build one of two National Biocontainment Laboratories. Known as the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), these laboratories will study emerging infectious diseases, including re-emerging infectious disease which could be used as agents of bioterror. Dr. Klempner serves as the Director of the NEIDL. The focus of research is on basic and translational studies leading to improved understanding of the pathogenesis of these agents, and development of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines for these infectious diseases.