Who are we?
The Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Basic Sciences is a biomedical research institute nestled within the Vanderbilt campus in Nashville, Tennessee. It comprises four non-clinical departments that are focused on advancing fundamental, discovery science, and oversees biomedical Ph.D. training within the School of Medicine.
The SOMBS seeks to improve human health through fundamental discovery, therapeutic innovation, and professional development and education. In strategic alignment with Vanderbilt Health, the Vanderbilt medical center, we foster an environment where curiosity thrives and scientists are empowered to generate new knowledge about human biology, health, and disease.
The Office of Biomedical Research Education and Training handles all aspects of the recruitment, application and admissions processes for graduate programs in the biomedical sciences. BRET also provides support and resources for Vanderbilt biomedical and life sciences graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and their faculty mentors.
The SOMBS community
The SOMBS is made up of four departments: the Department of Biochemistry, the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, and the Department of Pharmacology.
In addition, we house 12 centers and institutes and 18 research cores that provide resources, research support, and community to our faculty, staff, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students. Our centers and institutes span the disciplines of neuroscience, drug discovery, artificial intelligence, structural biology, metabolism, computational biology, and cancer. Our world-class shared research cores support investigators across Vanderbilt and Vanderbilt Health in projects focused on cancer biology, diabetes and metabolism, drug discovery, neuroscience, structural biology, and more.
In 2026, our community consists of:
- 90 tenure-track faculty
- 110 non-tenure-track faculty
- 81 postdoctoral fellows
- 659 graduate students
- 225 research staff
- 105 administrative staff
How we got here
Vanderbilt opened its own medical school in 1925. To support science-based training, the administration established departments of anatomy, biochemistry, pharmacology, and physiology, which evolved over time into our current departments: biochemistry, cell and developmental biology, pharmacology, and molecular physiology and biophysics.
In 2016, Vanderbilt and Vanderbilt Health split into separate entities, a reorganization that resulted in the creation of the SOMBS. The separation freed the school from the financial performance of the medical center, allowing it to more stably allocate resources for, protect, and advance discovery science and Ph.D. training.
The SOMBS is a unique entity among schools of medicine in the United States because it is not housed within the affiliated medical center. Instead, the SOMBS is housed within the university itself, and its dean reports to the university provost. However, the SOMBS retains close connections with Vanderbilt Health , ultimately making it a strong home for basic biomedical research.
Read more about the history of the SOMBS.
What is ‘basic science?’
Basic science, sometimes called “pure” or “fundamental” science, helps researchers understand living systems and life processes. This knowledge leads to better ways to predict, prevent, diagnose, and treat disease.
Through basic science, researchers try to answer fundamental questions about how life works. For instance:
- How do cells talk to each other?
- What controls a gene’s activity?
- How do proteins fold so they can work properly?
Sometimes, basic science has unexpected applications, and the knowledge gained is used in fields outside of health and medicine, such as in the making of food and household products, improvements to paternity testing, and even criminal forensics.
Basic science benefits the U.S. economy by providing jobs and helping launch new companies.