In a back corner of the University of Missouri’s medical building, a few floors above the hospital and tucked away to the right, Habib Zaghouani watches a cellular war. He has been up there for seven years, with an army of graduate students and a colony of mice, trying to understand why our bodies attack us and how we can make them stop.
Christine Hoeman is the head of Zaghouani’s project researching infant immune systems, an effort that seeks to understand why a newborn is more likely to have allergic reactions and fevers. The project will hopefully result in better vaccines for babies.