Research, News & Discoveries

Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier and Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs C. Cybele Raver honored faculty from across the university at an endowed chair investiture ceremony on campus Feb. 24, conferring the university’s highest scholastic rank on those who had received the designation during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020… Read More

L-R: Ann Richmond, Chi Yan By Wendy Bindeman Ann Richmond, professor of pharmacology, and Chi Yan, a research assistant professor in the Richmond lab, recently published a study showing that expression of a protein called CD40 can be used to predict response to immunotherapy in malignant melanoma. Read More

Many melanoma patients are treated with drugs called BRAF or MEK inhibitors that specifically target the mutant proteins created in cancerous tumors.  These inhibitors can block the tumors’ ability to grow and spread. According to Ann Richmond, Ingram Professor of Cancer Research and professor of pharmacology… Read More

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have made a fundamental discovery about how the heart compensates for genetic variations that otherwise could trigger abnormal and potentially fatal heart rhythms. Their findings, reported recently in the journal Circulation, add significantly to understanding what causes abnormal heart rhythms, or arrhythmias, and… Read More

Vanderbilt University has signed an exclusive, worldwide license and a research collaboration agreement with Neumora Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering precision medicines for brain diseases through the integration of data science and neuroscience.   The licensed program centers around the M4 muscarinic receptor positive allosteric modulator—including… Read More

Publicly available data sources help drive progress in science, especially complete and annotated data sources. As part of a student research project, corresponding author Anne Hatmaker, a Ph.D. student in the lab of Antonis Rokas, professor of biological sciences, and first author Miya Hugaboom, an undergraduate in the Rokas lab,… Read More

Stressful experiences can lead to adaptive or detrimental behaviors. Understanding how stress can affect our brains can help understand basic brain function and is also essential to discerning causes and treatments for some diseases. A group of researchers led by Jeffrey Conn, professor of pharmacology at… Read More

Richard Sando, assistant professor of pharmacology, has been selected to receive a 2022 Sloan Research Fellowship, one of the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early-career researchers. The fellowships, awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, honor extraordinary U.S. and Canadian scientists and scholars… Read More

When considering pursuing an M.D., biomedical Ph.D., or M.D./Ph.D., what knowledge could undergraduate students obtain to prepare them to decide on a pathway aligned with their interests, personality, and goals? Do undergraduates grasp what this journey as a student will look like, and what professional life afterward will entail? Beth… Read More

The brain is constantly firing and controlling purposeful action potentials—electronic messages used by neurons to communicate with each other and allow the brain to function. Conversely, the way spontaneous neural communication happens in the brain has been found to make use of a different process. Ege Kavalali, William Stokes Chair in Experimental… Read More