Keith Jarosinski’s research spans multiple aspects of herpesvirus-induced cancers including host-to-host transmission, latency, transformation, and reactivation using Marek’s disease virus (MDV) in chickens as a natural translational animal model. Most herpesviruses do not cause cancer in humans and animals, but occasionally can including Hodgkin’s lymphoma and Kaposi sarcoma caused by Epstein-Barr (EBV) and Kaposi sarcoma-associated (KSHV) viruses in humans. MDV uses similar mechanisms to induce lymphocytic cancers in chickens. His lab it trying to understand how herpesviruses induce transformation of lymphocytes that results in cancer with the goal of developing drugs or treatments to stop the development of cancer with these viruses.
Keith came to Illinois in August 2016 after completing a B.S. in Biotechnology from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in 1995 and Ph.D. in Microbiology from the State University of NY (SUNY) Health Science Center in Syracuse, NY (now Upstate Medical University) in 1999. After completing his PhD, he spent 12 years at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine in Dr. Karel A. Schat’s laboratory as a USDA-funded post-doctoral fellow (1999-2003) and Research Associate (2003-2008), and then went on to become a Senior Research Associate (2008-2011) in Dr. Nikolaus Osterrieder’s laboratory. Before coming to Illinois, Jarosinski spent five years (2011-2016) at the University of Iowa as a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology at the Carver College of Medicine. (Photo credit: Michelle Hassel)