KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WOKI / WVLT) – A University of Tennessee, Knoxville researcher has been recognized nationally for his groundbreaking work exploring how the body fights disease.
Andrew Monteith, an assistant professor of microbiology, has been named a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences — an honor awarded to early-career researchers showing exceptional promise in advancing human health.
Monteith was one of just 21 scholars selected from more than 200 nominations across the country. The prestigious award provides four years of funding to support innovative and high-impact research.
Monteith’s work centers on a factor often overlooked in medical research — heat. Specifically, his team is studying how fever and localized increases in temperature affect the body’s immune response to infection, cancer and autoimmune disease.
Traditional laboratory models often fail to account for fever, despite it being a common symptom in many illnesses. Monteith’s team is working to change that by developing new experimental systems that allow test subjects to develop fever-like conditions.
Researchers hope this approach will reveal how heat influences immune cell behavior, inflammation, and the body’s ability to fight off disease.
“This funding is going to allow us to go in a lot of different directions, to be able to take risks and hopefully advance the program on multiple fronts,” Monteith said.
Monteith says his ultimate goal is to improve how treatments are developed and tested, reducing the number of drugs that fail before reaching patients.
He hopes the research could begin translating into real-world treatments within the next four to five years, with collaboration between laboratory scientists and healthcare providers playing a key role in that process.
