Research, News & Discoveries

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been awarded a nearly $8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to construct a state-of-the-art BioSafety Level 3 (BSL3) facility for research involving the COVID-19 virus, anthrax and other dangerous microorganisms. VUMC currently has two BSL3 labs, but they are small, outdated and… Read More

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has received a five-year, $5 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to study precancerous lesions and early cancers in the colon, with the goal of developing new ways to prevent colorectal cancer, the nation’s second leading cancer killer. Robert Coffey, MD, Martha Shrubsole, PhD, and Ken… Read More

Dr. Ethan Lee, professor of cell and developmental biology and pharmacology, has been named a 2022 Innovation Fund investigator by The Pew Charitable Trusts. As a vote of confidence in the power of collaborative, interdisciplinary research, Pew created the Innovation Fund in 2017 to encourage partnerships among alumni of Pew’s  biomedical programs. Combining… Read More

Assistant Professor of Biochemistry Emily Hodges and graduate student Tyler Hansen used a blended approach to create a new, multi-omic method to identify and characterize gene regulatory elements—non-coding DNA sequences that control gene expression—in the human genome. The new technique, ATAC-STARR-seq, was published in Genome Research. During… Read More

One in 100 people have genetic variations that can cause potentially life-threatening heart conditions, including high cholesterol (lipid disorders), heart muscle disease (cardiomyopathies), and abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias). Yet the functional impact of most of these cardiovascular genetic variants — whether they disrupt normal function or are harmless — is… Read More

The Stanley Cohen Innovation Fund provides a yearly award to support innovative and groundbreaking research at Vanderbilt University. This year, after a competitive application process, Emily Hodges, assistant professor of biochemistry, and Terunaga Nakagawa, associate professor of molecular physiology and biophysics, were named as the 2022 recipients. Read More

Obesity and overnutrition increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes through several mechanisms. One of these is through loss of the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreatic islet.  Wenbiao Chen, PhD, and colleagues previously have shown that overnutrition stressed the endoplasmic reticulum, the part of the beta… Read More

John Wilson, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Vanderbilt University, has received a $3 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to develop technology that seeks to boost a person’s immune system to better fight cancer. Wilson is the Principal Investigator of the five-year grant. He specializes in… Read More

Alissa Weaver, Professor and Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair, Vanderbilt University, and Matthew Tyska, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor, Vanderbilt University have been named 2022 ASCB Fellows. “The 2022 ASCB Fellows are individuals who have contributed broadly and significantly to the cell biology community and to the Society. We honor their scientific achievement and their… Read More

Nancy Carrasco was recently named a 2023 Biophysical Society Fellow “for her broad-reaching studies of the sodium/iodide transporter including cloning and structure determination together with its roles in physiology and disease, and her impressive service to the Biophysics community.” The Biophysical Society is delighted to announce its 2023 Society Fellows. Read More