Howard Mielke, pharmacology research professor at the School of Medicine, found that long-term changes in soil lead levels in New Orleans have a corresponding impact on blood levels in children. Mielke’s research team collected rounds of soil samplings in the city over several years and compared them to children’s blood level data, which revealed decreasing lead in topsoil played a key factor in the children’s declining blood lead levels.

Francisco Estrada-Belli, a research assistant professor in the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane, was part of a team of researchers who uncovered evidence that suggests extreme and violent warfare, along with a massive fire, led to the destruction of the Maya city Witzna nearly 1,500 years ago, in what is now northern Guatemala.

A team of Tulane researchers —James McLachlan, associate professor of microbiology and immunology, John McLachlan, Weatherhead Professor of Pharmacology, and Franck Mauvais-Jarvis, Price-Goldsmith Professor of Nutrition — will study how sex differences shape disparate immune responses in men and women.

Researchers from Tulane School of Medicine authored a study in the Journal of Cell Biology that suggests some cancer cells survive chemotherapy by eating their neighboring tumor cells. The study suggests the act of cannibalism provides the treated cancer cells with energy to stay alive and initiate tumor relapse after the course of treatment is complete.

Through joint efforts of Tulane, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Army, a new vaccine has been developed that provides protection for the first time against equine encephalitic viruses in nonhuman primates. The encephalitic alphaviruses, spread by mosquitoes, are possible bioterrorism agents.

The National Institutes of Health named Mark VanLandingham, professor at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, the 12th Matilda White Riley Honors Distinguished Lecturer. VanLandingham was honored for his pioneering research on how culture and shared history helped the Vietnamese American community in New Orleans recover from Hurricane Katrina more quickly than other communities.

The important role that Tulane researchers have played in fighting infectious disease epidemics around the world was highlighted in “OutBreak: Epidemics in a Connected World,” an exhibit at the Diboll Gallery in the Tidewater Building from May–July. Co-sponsored by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the exhibit was part of a national effort to raise awareness of the human, animal and environmental factors contributing to infectious disease epidemics.