Research, News & Discoveries

Jan. 15, 2020, 12:08 PM by Kelsey Herbers A molecule produced by the brain that activates the same receptors as marijuana is protective against stress by reducing anxiety-causing connections between two brain regions, Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers report. This finding, published today in Neuron, could help explain why some… Read More

Antibody science has been around since the 1790s, but it’s come a long way thanks to innovators in medicine By Deborah Abrams Kaplan for Regeneron Major advances were made in the 1970s, when scientists used technology to produce large numbers of identical (monoclonal) antibodies in mice.3 The U.S. Food… Read More

ASPET is pleased to award Dr. P. Jeffrey Conn from the Vanderbilt Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery the 2020 Julius Axelrod Award in Pharmacology. The Axelrod Award was established in 1991 to honor the memory of the eminent American pharmacologist who shaped the fields of neuroscience, drug metabolism, and… Read More

Jan. 10, 2020, 8:30 AM by Leigh MacMillan Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) is a leading cause of hospital-acquired infection and diarrhea. C. diff infection requires the secretion of one or more bacterial toxins. Recent studies have suggested that the C. diff transferase toxin (CDT) increases the severity of infection. To… Read More

Jan. 6, 2020, 8:00 AM Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs Tracey George (Vanderbilt University) Thirteen outstanding faculty members from across the university have been awarded a Provost Research Studio for the 2019-20 academic year. The goal of the Provost Research Studios is to support the professional development of full-time faculty… Read More

New York, NY, December 19, 2019—The executive committee of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives announced the names of twenty members newly elected to the organization. Research interests among new members are broad, including brain evolution, the effects of poverty on mental health, imaging genomics, and olfaction. Founded in 1993,… Read More

Ege T. Kavalali, PhD, professor and acting chair of the Department of Pharmacology in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, has been elected a recipient of a prestigious Humboldt Research Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany. Kavalali, also William Stokes Professor of Experimental Therapeutics at… Read More

Dec. 20, 2019, 11:00 AM by Allison Whitten Prolonged stress can lead to a myriad of mental and physical health issues. Up to one quarter of people suffering from chronic stress also exhibit comorbid anxiety, depression, and substance use disorders. In a new study published in the… Read More

By Deborah Roby A mouse drinking from a water dispenser. Published under a CC0 1.0 license. Researchers at the Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research, along with collaborators at MIT and Salk Institute, have determined a neurological pathway that may be used to determine a… Read More

Dec. 17, 2019, 8:30 AM by Leigh MacMillan The protein kinase MELK is thought to affect cell cycle regulation, proliferation and mitosis. Overexpression of MELK impacts survival and proliferation of multiple cancer types, including glioblastomas and breast cancer, but its molecular functions in cancer development are unclear. Read More