Dr. Lee is a graduate of the Boston University School of Medicine, and completed his internship and residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Yale University School of Medicine, and continued at Yale as a Staff Physician at VA Connecticut Healthcare System. He also obtained his Ph.D in Investigative Medicine in the Yale Graduate School. Dr. Lee then became an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and a member of the San Antonio Center for Medical Mycology. He joined the faculty at UNM in September of 2007, and is an Associate Professor and Section Chief, Infectious Diseases at VA Albuquerque Medical Center. He is also the Medical Director of the HIV clinic at VA Albuquerque.

Dr. Lee studies the molecular pathogenesis of invasive candidiasis and also investigates translational aspects of Candida infection, including mechanisms of echinocandin resistance and molecular epidemiology of oral candidiasis in immunosuppressed patients. A major objective of Dr. Lee’s laboratory is to define the secretory pathways of secreted virulence proteins and determine if mutations in these pathways have an effect on virulence in vivo. He is currently studying loss-of-function mutations in several VPS (vacuole protein sorting) genes and their effects on aspartyl protease secretion, filamentation, biofilm formation, and in vivo virulence. This work is supported by a Department of Veterans Affairs MERIT award.

A second major focus of his laboratory is identification of novel secretory proteins in C. albicans and their role in virulence, using bioinformatic, genomic, and proteomic approaches. An additional goal is to identify novel markers of invasive candidiasis, as current diagnostic methods for invasive candidiasis remain sub-optimal. Dr Lee’s lab is also involved in translational research on invasive candidiasis, including collaborative studies of echinocandin-resistance in clinical Candida isolates, and the molecular epidemiology of oral candidiasis.