Health and Medicine
Grant from Google to support COVID gene expression study
Sep. 22, 2020—Vanderbilt researchers have been awarded $500,000 by Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, to study how COVID-19 alters gene expression in some people in ways that may be linked to to their risk of severe illness and death.
Study identifies antibodies that block alphaviruses
Sep. 20, 2020—Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have identified antibodies that, in animals, block infection by alphaviruses, which can cause chronic and debilitating joint pain and arthritis and are an increasing global health concern.
VUMC awarded $34 million to lead nationwide convalescent plasma study
Sep. 20, 2020—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.
‘Scavenger’ molecule may point to new atherosclerosis treatment
Sep. 20, 2020—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.
International collaboration with Vanderbilt scientists sheds light on rare exocyst mutations that cause severe developmental disabilities in children
Sep. 14, 2020—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.
NIH grant supports Vanderbilt effort to increase diversity in Alzheimer’s research
Sep. 11, 2020—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.
Griffith raising awareness about men’s health equity and structurally based risks for COVID-19
Sep. 11, 2020—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.
Vanderbilt team works across disciplines to replicate cellular filament behavior for the first time, shedding new light on a fundamental cellular process
Sep. 8, 2020—Cell biologists, physicists and computer scientists use computational modeling to pinpoint the components that shape cell behavior.
Vanderbilt research shows stimulating tuft cell production reverses intestinal inflammation
Aug. 28, 2020—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.
Study uses AI to sort patient messages by complexity
Aug. 27, 2020—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.
A potential new targeted therapy for metastatic melanoma
Aug. 19, 2020—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.
Discovery of natural compound may help fend off antibiotic resistance of hard-to-treat infections
Aug. 19, 2020—A bifunctional natural compound has been discovered with the potential to make antibiotic resistance to deadly infections less likely.