A researcher at the University of Rochester Medical Center has won the 2008 Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize for his contribution to the field of immunology.

The prize, which includes with a cash award of 100,000 euros, has been awarded to Tim Mosmann, Ph.D., director of the David H. Smith Center for Vaccine Biology and Immunology at the Medical Center. The Scientific Council of the Paul Ehrlich Foundation, a German organization gives the award each year to recognize achievement in Ehrlich's fields: immunology, oncology, haematology and microbiology.

Mantle cell lymphoma as seen under a microscope.

A James P. Wilmot Cancer Center scientist recently received two research grants, totaling more than $1.5 million, for separate, divergent studies of new therapies for follicular and mantle cell lymphomas.

In the first Lymphoma Research Foundation-funded project, Steven Bernstein, M.D., co-director of Wilmot's Lymphoma Biology Program at the University of Rochester Medical Center, will investigate whether rituximab, an antibody treatment for follicular lymphoma, causes the body's immune response to fight the disease. Rituximab, also known as Rituxan, is effective in treating the disease, but how it actually works remains unclear to scientists and oncologists.

Bernstein's team, which includes immunologists Shannon Hilchey, Ph.D., Tim Mosmann, Ph.D., and Alexandra Livingstone, Ph.D., will examine whether rituximab therapy generates an immune response specifically targeting the lymphoma cells.