Research

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been awarded a one-year, $34-million grant by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health, to conduct a nationwide study of “convalescent plasma” as a treatment for COVID-19. Read More

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

The transcriptional coregulator Swi-independent 3 — or Sin3 — switches on and off the genes that drive crucial biological processes during prenatal development, including cellular differentiation, maturation, survival, metabolism, and stress responses. Read More

When a bouncy ball deforms under the weight of your body, its rubber membrane stretches and contracts. Likewise, the membrane of a cell doubling itself prior to division must accommodate changes in intracellular pressure — or explode. Read More

RNA viruses invade cells and co-opt cellular machinery to replicate and translate their genomic material. Read More

The oncogene MYCN regulates cancer cell growth, proliferation, metabolism, and survival; tumors with increased MYCN expression are more aggressive. Read More

Ethnocentric concerns about the growing political power and social influence of immigrants, African Americans and Latinos are undermining Republicans’ commitment to long-held democratic norms, according to new research by Vanderbilt University political science professor Larry Bartels. Read More

A new study sheds new light on the challenges facing African American women. More than half of all African American women in the United States report having at least one family member who is incarcerated, causing higher levels of depressive symptoms and psychological distress than previously understood. Read More

When it comes to creating successful business interactions, exchanges between buyers and sellers with similar emotional abilities may lead to more lucrative outcomes than an animated or ambitious employee alone. Read More

Vanderbilt engineers have received a $1.4 million NIH grant to work toward a compact, silent, less expensive and potentially portable MRI device. Read More

Research shows how the actions of Vip1 help cells change their shape in response to environmental conditions. Read More

By Sohini Roy Marburg viruses cause a hemorrhagic fever in humans, with a fatality rate of up to 90 percent. Currently, Marburg disease can neither be prevented by a vaccine nor therapeutically treated. Understanding how the immune system of a MARV survivor reacts against the virus can yield clues to design a treatment. With this... Read More

Physician-scientists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center are investigating whether SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can be spread through aerosolized emissions (microscopic droplets and particles) during minimally invasive surgery in children. 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

All software is not created equal. At one end are apps on a smartphone and consumer-facing programs for which periodic updates to fix bugs and security issues are routine, like replacing an air conditioning filter or getting an annual flu shot. At the other end are large, complex software systems such as software used in... 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

Developing atomically thin graphene membranes used to separate salt from water is extraordinarily complex and the effort grows more crucial as population growth, industrialization and climate change strain freshwater resources. Vanderbilt engineering researchers report a breakthrough in scalable fabrication of graphene membrane with a sealing technology that corrects variations in the pore size so they... Read More

Mark Does, professor of biomedical engineering has been selected as a Fellow of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. His research program focuses on developing and applying MRI methods to quantitatively characterize various properties and/or compositions of tissue. It includes developing models of nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation and water diffusion in tissue, development... 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

Craig Duvall, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Engineering, has been elevated to the rank of Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society. Duvall and his research program focus on development of technologies for controlled drug release, tissue regeneration and therapeutics, and delivery of intracellular-acting biologic drugs such as siRNA and peptide therapeutics. The applications of these technologies... Read More