Marissa Shapiro

Kate is a graduate student in the Biochemistry Graduate Program and a member of the Sanders lab since 2020. Her research focuses on the potassium channel KCNQ1 and mutations that cause a cardiac disorder called type 1 long QT syndrome (LQT1). Sanders lab researchers have determined that mistrafficking is a common cause of KCNQ1 dysfunction in LQT1. Kate’s effort to search for small molecules that might remedy this mistrafficking provides an early foundation for possible drug discovery efforts to treat LQT1 and related cardiac disorders. Read More

A new potential treatment for schizophrenia discovered through the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery at Vanderbilt University has entered phase 1 clinical trials, marking the fifth WCNDD therapeutic to advance into human testing. Read More

To honor and continue the legacy of Richard Caprioli, Ph.D., Stanford Moore Chair in Biochemistry and Director Emeritus of the Mass Spectrometry Research Center, the Richard Caprioli Basic Sciences Research Award for Technology Education Fund was established to allow Vanderbilt University Ph.D. students in the School of Medicine to pursue an opportunity to obtain hands-on training and education in one or more new technologies outside of those obtained in their graduate research training. The scholarship will be awarded to a Ph.D. student to enhance the approach to their research program. Read More

Vanderbilt has been training physician-scientists for more than 60 years. Many graduates have gone on to leadership positions in academia, government, industry and clinical practice. Read More

Prior to Akil’s remarks, the 2025 Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholar, Kimberly Bress, an MD-PhD candidate mentored by Akil, briefly described her dissertation research, which applies functional magnetic resonance imaging to study facial expressions (nonverbal communication) in people with autism spectrum disorder. Read More

The Vanderbilt Vision Research Center was founded in 1989 and secured the National Eye Institute core grant that still supports it; the grant will provide approximately $3.3 million over the current five-year funding period. Read More

Overleaf is a web-based LaTeX code editor that enables users to write, edit and publish scientific documents. It simplifies the creation of complex documents with precise layouts by incorporating equations, figures and bibliographies seamlessly, making it ideal for structured writing and eliminating the need to install LaTeX software locally. It is now available to Vanderbilt students, faculty and staff free of charge. Read More

In the hunt for new therapeutics for cancer and infectious diseases, lasso peptides prove to be a catch. Their knot-like structures afford these molecules high stability and diverse biological activities, making them a promising avenue for new therapeutics. To better unleash their clinical potential, a team co-led by Doug Mitchell developed LassoESM, a new large language model for predicting lasso peptide properties. Read More

Prashant Donthamsetti has received a prestigious NIH Director’s Pioneer Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. His project will use a new platform called Tag-Guided Drug to uncover how specific dopamine signaling proteins contribute to addiction. This work paves the way for more precise and effective addiction therapies. Read More

Vanderbilt-Ingram names William Tansey associate director for Shared Resources and Douglas Kojetin as co-leader of the Genome Maintenance Research Program. The Genome Maintenance Research Program is focused on understanding how DNA is damaged, repaired, packaged, expressed and replicated. Read More