Discoveries

In a new paper postdoctoral fellow Rong Sun and members of the Qiangjun Zhou lab used cryo-electron tomography to better understand the precise structural arrangement of synapses of excitatory primary hippocampal neurons. Read More

The Vanderbilt Brain Institute’s annual Brain Blast event, held March 26 at the downtown Nashville Public Library, celebrated 25 years of discovery with a day of hands-on neuroscience activities for K–8 students and families. Read More

Graduate students Atlee Witt, Ansley Kunnath, and Allie Lake are three of 100 doctoral students from across the U.S. and Canada to receive the P.E.O. Scholar Award in recognition of their outstanding academic achievements. Read More

Corey Hayford, PhD’21, sat down with us to discuss his experience studying basic science at Vanderbilt and how it played a role in his career. Hayford is now a principal data engineer at Cellarity. Read More

A new study uncovered how tissues detect and respond to damage in basement membranes, and how they recruit a previously unknown set of "matrix mender" cells to repair the tissue. The results of this study have far-reaching implications for numerous diseases, including diabetes, dementia, and cancer. Read More

Meet Naila Tasneem, a research technician in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology in the Vanderbilt School of Medicine Basic Sciences. Read More

Congratulations to our School of Medicine Basic Sciences members who were promoted or received new appointments between January and March 2025. These individuals significantly enrich our pursuit of pathbreaking research and contribute to the growth and success of our school. Read More

Members of the diabetes and metabolic research community gathered at Vanderbilt for a symposium honoring Dr. Alan Cherrington, whose monumental contributions to diabetes research and metabolic regulation have revolutionized therapeutic strategies for diabetes management throughout his career. Read More

Researchers discovered that the protein tenascin-C is a crucial molecular player in the aggressiveness of anaplastic thyroid cancer. The results could lead to better targeted therapeutics for thyroid cancer. Read More

Meet Ashley Haddard, the senior program manager for research for the Department of Pharmacology in the Vanderbilt School of Medicine Basic Sciences. Read More