Health And Medicine

A small-molecule “scavenger” that reduces inflammation and formation of atherosclerotic plaque in blood vessels in mice potentially could lead to a new approach for treating atherosclerosis in humans, according to researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Read More

Mukhtar Ahmed, Christian de Caestecker and Ian Macara, in collaboration with geneticists from Australia and Italy discover novel mutations in the Exocyst, providing new understanding of a critical cellular protein complex. Read More

A new $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health is enabling Vanderbilt University chemist Renã A.S. Robinson to expand her research on racial disparities in Alzheimer’s and other diseases. Read More

Derek Griffith, professor of medicine, health and society and founding director of the Center for Research on Men’s Health, takes an intersectional approach to researching the impacts of COVID-19, advocating for a more nuanced understanding of identity’s role in determining risk to enhance policy reforms toward greater health equity. Read More

Cell biologists, physicists and computer scientists use computational modeling to pinpoint the components that shape cell behavior. Read More

Single-cell and multisystem analysis leads cell biologists at Vanderbilt to new understanding of rare cells, with potential inflammation-reducing therapeutics for Crohn’s disease and IBD patients. Read More

Taking an interest in electronic message threads between surgical patients and their health care teams, a research group at Vanderbilt University Medical Center has tested how well certain commonly used machine learning algorithms can classify such exchanges according to their clinical decision-making complexity. Read More

While 60 percent of people with metastatic melanoma, an aggressive type of skin cancer, have multiple treatment options available to them, roughly 40 percent either do not respond to treatment, or relapse. Read More

A bifunctional natural compound has been discovered with the potential to make antibiotic resistance to deadly infections less likely. Read More

An inflammatory factor in mucus could be a biomarker of treatment-resistant chronic sinusitis used to determine which patients are at risk for repeat sinus surgery. Read More

Each week a woman consumes alcohol during the first five to 10 weeks of pregnancy is associated with an incremental 8% increase in risk of miscarriage, according to a study published this week by Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers. Read More

A computational technique that combines the effect of multiple genomic variants has the potential to identify high-risk individuals for cancer prevention. Read More

Identifying the norovirus genotypes associated with more severe infections in children could guide strain selection for candidate norovirus vaccines. Read More

Deborah Lannigan and colleagues identify a key regulator of the estrogen receptor and suggest that its downregulation by oral contraceptives may increase oxidative stress and DNA damage, a common cause of cancer. Read More

A team of Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers has received a $3.1 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to develop advanced, patient-specific cochlear implant stimulation models for customized implant programming. Read More

Assistant Professor of Pharmacology Cody Siciliano has been awarded the Fay/Frank Seed Grant from the Brain Research Foundation and the Alkermes Pathways Research Award from the biopharmaceutical company Alkermes. Both awards support early-stage researchers pursuing high-risk, high-impact innovative research so that their work may become competitive for NIH grants and other types of funding in the future. Read More

The multicellular, 3-D structure of human pancreatic islets — the areas of the pancreas containing hormone-producing or endocrine cells — has presented challenges to researchers as they study and manipulate these cells’ function, but Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers have now developed a pseudoislet system that allows for much easier study of islet function. Read More

A protein linked to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive neurological disease that causes muscle weakness, may be a key to treating fibrotic disease of the kidneys and other organs, researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center reported recently. Read More

Vanderbilt biomedical engineers have developed COVID-19 tests immune to supply chain shortages. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers conducted the largest analysis to date of a heart complication in children following stem cell transplant. The findings may help guide screening practices to improve outcomes. Read More