Research Sanders originated the idea of the "Molecule of the Year" feature in
Science. He was a visiting scientist at the
University of California at San Francisco, and then a postdoctoral fellow at the
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, which is affiliated with
MIT. It was there that he began his studies on the entry of viruses into cells with a focus on the inhibition of infection and applications to
gene therapy. Sanders joined the Markey Center for Structural Biology at Purdue University in 1995, where he was the leader of the Molecular
Virology program and also a member of the Cancer Center. He was the discoverer of a biochemical reaction, thiol-disulfide exchange, that leads to the entry of cancer-causing
retroviruses into cells. He also is the primary inventor on two U.S. patents on novel gene-therapy delivery techniques. His work on the
Ebola virus led to his participation in the U.S.
Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Biological Weapons Proliferation Prevention Program, a product of the
Nunn-Lugar legislation. His responsibilities included inspecting the Vector laboratory in
Siberia, which was the site of biological-weapons development in the era of the
Soviet Union. He has investigated the transmission of viruses from other animals, especially birds, to humans and has been invited to speak on ethics, biodefense, evolution, gene therapy, vaccination and influenza viruses in public forums including regular interviews on
WIBC in Indianapolis, He received a
National Science Foundation CAREER Award for his work on an enzyme involved in producing
methane, a greenhouse gas and potential energy source. He is also an
American Cancer Society Research Scholar. In 2003 he conducted his
sabbatical research at the
Weizmann Institute in
Israel. Sanders strongly criticized a 2010
Science article authored by
Felisa Wolfe-Simon and
Paul Davies, in which the discovery of arsenic-based life is claimed. He argued that the original
Science article on the arsenic bacteria should be retracted, on the basis that the data in the paper were misrepresented in the article. The article was retracted in 2025. Sanders' work on the Ebola virus led to media interviews during the 2014
Ebola virus disease outbreak in Western Africa. He declared that there was little risk on infection for the individual American and asserted that the panic about the virus could be worse than the disease in the United States. He was an early advocate of focusing on regional centers as places for treatment of Ebola virus victims in the United States and asserted that patients should share their travel history whenever they meet with a medical provider, stating, "If you go to South America or East Asia there is a different ensemble of possible diseases associated with a set of symptoms, and the physician won't necessarily think about them if he isn't aware of where you've been traveling recently." He opposed mandatory quarantines for asymptomatic patients that may have been exposed to Ebola virus. Sanders wrote an article about his experience with the media including an encounter with
Karl Rove. During the
Coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak Sanders has been interviewed about the science behind public policy. He was reported to have criticized President
Donald Trump for touting the use of
chloroquine as a treatment for
Coronavirus disease 2019. An article by Sanders was featured among a collection about keeping up with the contemporary academic literature. He has also described new approaches to developing the literary skills of graduate students in the sciences and rubrics for how to write (and how not to write) a scientific review article. A biographical memoir on his doctoral advisor,
Daniel E. Koshland Jr. by Sanders has been published by the United States
National Academy of Sciences.
Work on plagiarism and academic integrity Sanders is regarded as a scientific detective, arguing that
plagiarism is a serious academic issue that must be confronted. He also maintains that guest authors are plagiarists and offers a simpler definition of
plagiarism. According to the
New York Times, Sanders contacted scientific journals to obtain corrections and retractions of articles by
Carlo M. Croce. Sanders "made claims of falsified data and plagiarism directly to scientific journals where more than 20 of Croce's papers have been published." In 2017 Croce filed a defamation lawsuit against Sanders, who was quoted in the
New York Times article that reported allegations of scientific misconduct against Croce. In May 2020 Croce lost the defamation lawsuit against Sanders. The presiding judge wrote: “…Discovery has proved the existence of about 30 instances of fabrication or duplication" in Croce's research papers, and "Sanders has a knack for detecting image duplication and remembering the blots he sees reported in scientific journals." The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit of Appeal upheld the dismissal of the lawsuit, stating: "Journals have found research problems and plagiarism in articles coming from Croce’s lab. Sometimes, the problems were severe enough for the journals to publish corrections or expressions of concern (and sometimes to withdraw the paper). However you define 'scientific norms,' we know that academic journals felt some responsibility to alert the scientific community about problems in some of Croce’s papers. That suggests the papers contained problems outside the range of acceptable research and publishing practices. Thus, the statement that people in Croce’s lab have violated scientific norms is substantially true." Sanders was interviewed about his experience defending himself in the suit wherein he recommended collaborations between scientific whistleblowers. Sanders authored an article on reforming grant
peer review with the goal of reducing bias.
University Senate As Chair of the Purdue University Senate, Sanders published a statement of academic principles. ==Political career==