pathology microbiology and immunology

Mark Boothby and colleagues are exploring the factors that contribute to antibody production and quality, which are key to our defense against pathogens and response to vaccines.

Jonathan Schoenecker and colleagues have discovered a new mechanism for the formation of bone in soft tissues — a complication of severe injuries that causes pain and limits mobility.

Vanderbilt researchers led by Eric Skaar are probing the mechanisms bacteria use when faced with nutrient starvation — a host defense strategy called “nutritional immunity.”

In January scientists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and colleagues in Boston, Seattle and St. Louis were given an audacious goal to develop — in 90 days — a protective antibody-based treatment that potentially will stop the spread of the Zika virus.

A medicine currently being tested as a chemoprevention agent for multiple types of cancer has more than one trick in its bag when it comes to preventing stomach cancer, Vanderbilt researchers have discovered.

Frogs don’t like living near noisy highways any better than people do, but research from Vanderbilt suggests that frogs, like hardened city-dwellers, can learn to adapt to the constant din of rumbling trucks, rolling tires and honking horns.

Understanding how a bacterial protein that influences the risk of stomach cancer is produced could guide new strategies for treatment.