The oral biology doctoral program is an interdisciplinary program consisting of twenty-nine faculty from three health sciences colleges (dentistry, medicine, and veterinary medicine) and the Comprehensive Cancer Center. The major focus of the program is laboratory-based education in conducting research. Students of the program learn to develop a hypothesis, design logically consistent research protocol, collect and analyze scientific data, and explain scientific findings. Students are educated to understand current and classic scientific facts and principles that, in the broadest sense, relate to the dental and craniofacial region. The program also teaches students how to choose and study significant scientific problems using modern scientific approaches. The research interests of the faculty include signaling, gene expression, recruitment and function of inflammatory/immune cells, the regulation of wound healing, viral immunity, bacterial immunity, neuroendocrine modulation of inflammatory/immune responses, and cancer immunobiology. The investigators in this group have major interactions with other basic science departments on campus and have joint appointments in the Comprehensive Cancer Center, Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Biochemistry, Neuroscience and the Institute for Behavioral Medicine.