Nathan Wolfe

Nathan Wolfe (born Aug. 24, 1970, Detroit, Mich., U.S.) American virologist and epidemiologist who conducted groundbreaking studies on the transmission of infectious viruses. His research focused primarily on the transmission of viruses closely related to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) between nonhuman primates and bushmeat hunters in Africa. Wolfe also played a central role in establishing the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI), a program designed to monitor the transmission of viruses from animals to humans in countries worldwide.

Wolfe received a bachelor’s degree in human biology from Stanford University and subsequently attended Harvard University, where he received a master’s degree in biological anthropology in 1995 and a doctorate in immunology and infectious disease in 1998. From 1999 to 2006 Wolfe conducted research as a postdoctoral student and then as an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University. There he worked with American epidemiologist Donald Burke, who suspected that the practice of hunting bushmeat in Africa had exposed a source of HIV. Based in Cameroon, Wolfe studied the local hunters and their hunting practices, often accompanying subsistence hunters on their treks into jungles and confronting difficult research conditions. In 2004 he and his colleagues found that 1 percent of bushmeat hunters were infected with simian foamy virus—a virus that is closely related to HIV and carried by nonhuman primates. This study demonstrated not only that viruses related to HIV and common to wild animals can be transmitted to humans via contact with the animal’s blood but also that these agents can potentially give rise to new strains of infectious viruses in humans.

In 2005 Wolfe received the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award for his novel investigations concerning the transmission of viruses. The following year he joined the department of epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He began pursuing ways to monitor, predict, and prevent animal-to-human transfer of viruses and conducted projects in Africa and Southeast Asia. In China he collaborated with scientists to investigate wet markets (food markets that sell live animals) as a source of zoonoses (diseases from wild animals). Wolfe also became involved in wildlife conservation and habitat preservation as a means to limit the hunting of wild animals and thus the spread of infectious viruses.

In February 2008, at a meeting sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Wolfe formally announced his plans for the GVFI. The goal of the initiative was to reduce the threat of disease to public health by detecting the emergence of infectious agents in humans and to control these agents before they gave rise to diseases of pandemic proportions. His monitoring project in central Africa served as a basic model that could be adapted to other countries around the world.