Health And Medicine

The highly selective Beckman Scholars Program is celebrating 15 years of partnership with the College of Arts and Science. Over the years, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation has provided more than $543,000 in support of 23 undergraduate Beckman Scholars at Vanderbilt who engage in unique, hands-on, mentored research. Read More

Leading investigators in diabetes, pancreas and islet biology, and computational biology have received $12.5 million in two five-year awards from the National Institutes of Health to create the world’s first, integrated knowledge base of human-derived tissue- and cellular-level pancreatic information to support innovative, collaborative and reproducible research. Read More

Sean Davies, associate professor of pharmacology and associate director of graduate studies for the department, has been awarded a Scaling Success grant from Research Development and Support in the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Innovation. Read More

Led by Neil Osheroff, Vanderbilt researchers are the first to undertake a systematic analysis of the mechanism of action of gepotidacin, a first-in-class triazaacenaphthylene antibacterial, against its targets in Escherichia coli—the type II topoisomerases gyrase and topoisomerase IV—and the mechanistic basis for drug resistance. E. coli is the etiological agent of most urinary tract infections. Read More

An $8.9 million grant from the NIH will establish the Vanderbilt AUD Research and Education Center, enhancing Vanderbilt University’s national leadership in neuroscience and addiction research. This initiative aims to foster interdisciplinary collaboration, advance understanding and treatment of alcohol use disorder, and engage the public through education and outreach efforts. Read More

Vanderbilt University Professor of Biochemistry and Vice Dean of Basic Sciences Chuck Sanders and Professor of Biochemistry Bruce Carter have been hard at work searching for therapies, if not a cure, for CMT. Read More

Manuel Ascano, associate professor of biochemistry and pathology, microbiology and immunology, and Dr. Alissa Weaver, Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair and director of the Vanderbilt Center for Extracellular Vesicle Research, are one of nine U.S. research teams awarded funding from the National Science Foundation to more fully understand the potential biotechnological uses of RNA, ranging from crop disease protection to treatments that combat cancer. Read More

Brandt Eichman and Walter Chazin, professors of biochemistry, have worked together to provide a better understanding of how exactly DNA replication is initiated in eukaryotes. Using Vanderbilt’s state-of-the-art instrumentation in the Center for Structural Biology’s Cryo-Electron Microscopy Facility, Eichman, Chazin and their colleagues provided detailed visualizations of a multi-functional protein in action, which sheds light on how DNA replication is initiated in humans. Read More

The Phase 3 CELLEBRATE trial to test a regenerative stem cell-based therapy in treating patients with stress urinary incontinence is continuing to recruit additional subjects after changing its study protocol to include only patients who have already tried surgery.  Read More

WATCH: Hear how Bass Military Scholar Vanessa Morales is harnessing her personal experiences to make her a more compassionate nurse midwife. Read More

A U.S.-Canadian research collaboration led by Vanderbilt University Medical Center has identified common, age-associated changes in the blood as a risk factor for acute kidney injury, which occurs in more than 1 in 5 hospitalized adults worldwide. Read More

WATCH: Learn how biomedical engineering major Schyler Rowland says mentors have inspired her future in fighting diseases Read More

ASPIRE to Innovate Postdoctoral Fellow Catherine Leasure is the co-author of a comment article published this month in Nature Reviews Bioengineering addressing the pressing obstacle faced by modern drug development: worryingly poor success rates of pharmaceuticals progressing to clinical phases. Read More

Vanderbilt scientist Houra Merrikh led a team of researchers who discovered the first evolution-resistant chemical compound that prevents drug resistance development in bacteria. The compound is also a drug development platform that targets antimicrobial resistance during treatment of infections with antibiotics and evolution in general, Merrikh said. Read More

Ethan Lippmann, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and biomedical engineering, has won a Collaborative Pairs Pilot Project Award from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) to create a more effective way for the immune system to fight against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. Read More

The lab of Professor of Biochemistry Fred Guengerich has proposed a paradigm shift in the understanding of a critical chemical reaction involved in sterol biosynthesis. Read More

The World Health Organization ranks antimicrobial resistance as one of the top ten global health risks. Vanderbilt researchers led by Houra Merrikh identified the first anti-evolution compound that targets AMR during treatment of infections with antibiotics. Read More

Led by Terunaga Nakagawa, an international collaboration describes for the first time the fundamental mechanism underpinning cellular processes that lead to learning and memory. Read More

An international genetic study using multiancestry biobanks has identified novel genetic locations associated with primary open-angle glaucoma, the most common type of glaucoma and the leading cause of irreversible blindness globally. Read More

An analysis of genomic data from nearly 250,000 participants in the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program has identified more than 275 million previously unreported genetic variations, nearly 4 million of which have potential health consequences. Read More