If the body were a country, the immune system would be its national guard. And it couldn't ask for a better homeland defense. The immune system is remarkably effective at protecting us against the millions of pathogens that threaten us daily. We have only to see what happens when our immune system is compromised – from disease, for instance, or by immunosuppressant drugs following organ transplantation – to understand the power it wields when it's operating at full strength.

There is no doubt that we have made tremendous progress in understanding how the immune system responds to disease, enabling us to develop vaccines for so many of the illnesses, like polio, smallpox, and whooping cough, that once haunted us.

But infectious diseases we thought we had conquered, like tuberculosis, are returning in new guises that resist standard treatments. And those that have emerged in the past few decades and the more recent past, like toxic shock syndrome, drug-resistant staphylococcus, and avian flu, present dangerous new challenges.

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On March 1, 2008, ITI awarded eight seed grants to faculty members in the Stanford School of Medicine.  Click here for the list of winners .

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