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As 2025 draws to a close, we reflect on the achievements and contributions to science made by the School of Medicine Basic Sciences community over the past year. SOMBS facilitates outstanding fundamental science research across four departments, two institutes, 10 centers, and 18 core facilities. The work of our faculty,… Read More

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of the new antibiotic gepotidacin for use against uncomplicated gonorrhea. The biochemistry lab of Neil Osheroff provided all mechanism of action data in the FDA application. 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

In a heartwarming tribute to a remarkable career, more than 70 of his former graduate students and postdoctoral scholars recently traveled from across the globe for a three-day festivity on Oct. 3–5 to celebrate Larry Marnett’s 50 years in academia. Read More

Vanderbilt’s Dr. Benjamin P. Brown is improving the way the field of drug discovery creates machine learning algorithms to predict a protein’s interactions with a small molecule. These improvements bring ML closer to fulfilling its potential in the field—something that has not been realized after more than a decade of work. Read More

Started in June 2025, a new collaborative science project called diffUSE involving Vanderbilt University, Cornell University, and the University of California, San Francisco, could be the next watershed moment. The $5 million, three-year project led by the Astera Institute will advance our understanding of protein motion. Using diffuse scattering, an overlooked signal measured by X-ray crystallography, the project will determine how protein dynamics are characterized, leading to a new paradigm in dynamic structural biology. Read More

The Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Basic Sciences welcomed 42 new graduate students into its Interdisciplinary Graduate Program and Quantitative and Chemical Biology Program through orientation events and the Simple Beginnings ceremony. These academic programs combine coursework and research to guide students toward earning a Ph.D. and careers in the biomedical sciences. Read More

A colorectal cancer research team led by Robert Coffey has received a Specialized Programs of Research Excellence grant renewal totaling $12.6 million from the National Cancer Institute.The team has made numerous discoveries over the past 23 years, and it plans to build upon those achievements with the goal of “drugging the undruggable.” Vanderbilt-Ingram is one of only four cancer centers in the U.S. with GI Cancer SPORE funding. Read More

David Cortez and Rahul Bhowmick won the Chancellor’s Award for Research for their work, “RAD51 Bypasses the CMG Helicase to Promote Replication Fork Reversal,” which was published in the journal Science. Read More