Vanderbilt Basic Sciences

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

By Emily Overway Updated May 2025 Thanks to a partnership between the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Basic Sciences and the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, all graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, staff, and primary faculty in the SOMBS have access to BioRender Premium. You can… Read More

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) — the most common form of lupus — is an autoimmune disease that causes widespread inflammation and tissue damage. David Harrison, MD, and colleagues have now described a new mechanism responsible for SLE.  They found that in humans with SLE and in two… Read More

An essential component of a graduate student’s training is the first-year coursework, which fosters the skills needed to be an independent researcher, such as critical literature analysis, the ability to understand the current state of a given field, and hypothesis generation. In the spring of 2020, a committee comprising faculty… Read More

Alyssa Hasty (associate dean for faculty, School of Medicine Basic Sciences), Claudia Paz (chief business officer, School of Medicine Basic Sciences), Tiffany Lawrence Givens (director of human resources, Basic Sciences Dean’s Office, School of Medicine), and Kimberly D. Turner (assistant dean of administrative operations, School of Medicine Basic Sciences) have been named to… Read More

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has opened a state-of-the-art automated biobanking system that can store as many as 10 million biospecimens, including blood and body fluids, tissue, and genetic and protein material, at temperatures down to minus 80 degrees Celsius. The “BioStore” was purchased from its manufacturer, Massachusetts-based Azenta Life… Read More

Bacteria in our bodies bind to various host cell surface receptors, which determines where the bacteria live and how they behave. These receptors, made up of chains of sugar molecules called glycans, are more than meets the eye. Cells existing within progressive disease states like cancer can have an increased… Read More

Spend a day in the Tyska lab with graduate student Caroline Cencer via this TikTok video! @CarolineCencer @TyskaLabActual… Read More

Vanderbilt researchers have developed an active machine learning approach to predict the effects of tumor variants of unknown significance, or VUS, on sensitivity to chemotherapy. VUS, mutated bits of DNA with unknown impacts on cancer risk, are constantly being identified. The growing number of rare VUS makes it imperative for… Read More

In Grapevine, Arkansas students spent more than two hours on the school bus every day for years. Local scientist Billy Hudson saw that time as an opportunity to create a “magic” school bus with internet and computers where students could spend time learning. Now, more than a decade later, Hudson… Read More