School of Veterinary Medicine

For a trove of examples of the rich outcomes of interdisciplinary work, look no further than Darko Stefanovski’s research portfolio.

Each year, about 2 million people contract leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease transmitted by the bite of a sand fly. The cutaneous form of the disease results in disfiguring skin ulcers that may take months or years to heal and in rare cases can become metastatic, causing major tissue damage.

If you’ve ever wondered how a vaccine given decades ago can still protect against infection, you have your plasma cells to thank. Plasma cells are long-lived B cells that reside in the bone marrow and churn out antibodies against previously encountered vaccines or pathogens.

Immunotherapies have revolutionized cancer treatment, offering hope to those whose malignancies have stubbornly survived other existing treatments. Yet solid tumor cancers are often resistant to these approaches.

Viruses and their hosts are in a eternal game of one-upmanship. If a host cell evolves a way to stop a virus from spreading, the virus will look for a new path. And so on and so forth.

Mitochondria, the mighty energy factories of the cell, often malfunction in cancer, as well as in other conditions such as aging, neurodegenerative disease and heart disease. Whether these changes in mitochondria actually contribute to the spread of cancer, however, has been controversial.

Ten professors from the University of Pennsylvania have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They are among a class of 391 members honored for their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.

By Patrick Ammerman Oftentimes the most important scientific work is accomplished via serendipity; by following up on an unexpected finding and uncovering an entirely new area of research.

When treating cancer with chemotherapy and radiation, decisions about dose must walk a fine line between attacking cancerous cells and preserving healthy ones. Overly aggressive radiation therapy to the torso, for example, can damage the epithelial cells that line the intestines, leading to chronic gastrointestinal problems.

John T. Farrar of the Perelman School of Medicine, Elliot V.