Department Of Cell And Developmental Biology

Ela Knapik still remembers the first zebrafish she saw under a microscope—two days old, no bigger than an eyelash, tail wiggling, heart visibly beating. That was more than 20 years ago during her search for a postdoc position. That tiny fish has held her attention ever since and helped unravel many of the biological mysteries she has published about during her professional career. Read More

Ellis Island Honors Society Chairman Nasser J. Kazeminy awarded Billy Hudson, director of the Vanderbilt Center for Matrix Biology and the Elliott V. Newman Professor of Medicine, with a 2026 Ellis Island Medal of Honor on May 16 at a black-tie gala. The Ellis Island Medals of Honor rank among the nation’s most renowned awards, officially recognized by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, with each year’s recipients listed in the Congressional Record. Read More

An audience of more than 500 staff members attended the 2026 Spring Staff Assembly to reflect on the year’s milestones and celebrate their colleagues achievements. Several individual staff members and teams across the university were recognized for their contributions during the awards ceremony. Read More

Graduate and professional students share how they've become more of the person they want to be while at Vanderbilt. Read More

The annual Graduate Education Honors Banquet honored doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty members who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, excellence in academics, innovation and mentorship. The March 19 banquet recognized the outstanding achievements taking place across more than 50 graduate programs and departments. Read More

Everything you touch was developed by basic science, says Ian Macara, chair of the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology. From food varieties and new crops, to your phone, your computer and the plastics we use every day, everything originally came out of a basic research lab. Macara's department, within the School of Medicine Basic Sciences, aims to train the next generation of scientists to advance basic biomedical research at the cellular, molecular and organismal levels. Read More

Think of cells as factories that hold sets of machines doing different things. How those machines are organized and used determines the efficiency of the factory. Vanderbilt researchers are looking into how cells reorganize those machines over time—and what that means for aging. They’re focused on a cell structure (machine) called the ER, which is known to be vital to cell processes but has not yet been thoroughly studied. “Changes in the ER occur relatively early in the aging process,” says Assistant Professor Kris Burkewitz. “One of the most exciting implications of this is that it may be one of the triggers for what comes later: dysfunction and disease.” And identifying the trigger could lead to being able to stop the firing. Read More

Cells lining crucial structures in the kidney are full of mitochondria—parts of the cell that help it do its job. The cost of doing that job, though, can be damage to the mitochondria, which then cripples the cells and leads to poor kidney function. Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have found that the protein Rac1 kicks cell repair into high gear to help the body remove and replace damaged mitochondria. Their work was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Assistant Professor Fabian Bock is among the paper’s authors. Read More

Kathleen DelGiorno, assistant professor of cell and developmental biology, has received a Research Scholar Award from the American Cancer Society. The award will fund research into potential therapies against pancreatic cancer, the third-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, which is forecast to become the second-leading cause by 2030. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers, including those from the Vanderbilt Brain Institute, have made significant strides in understanding how the enteric nervous system—sometimes called the “brain” of the gut—forms and functions. Read More

After concluding her term as associate dean for academic affairs for the Graduate School, Terrah Akard will return to her role as professor of nursing in the School of Nursing. Julián Hillyer, Centennial Professor of Biological Sciences, and Andrea Page-McCaw, Stevenson Chair and professor of cell and developmental biology, have been named associate deans for academic affairs. Read More

In a scientific first, researchers from Vanderbilt University and the University of California, San Diego, have generated a high-resolution metabolic “map” of how cells orchestrate glucose processing, revealing a hidden world where organelles and molecular complexes collaborate when responding to a rush of nutrients. This new study, published in Nature Communications, has redefined how glucose metabolism is visualized at the single-cell level. Read More

A new study by Vanderbilt investigators uncovered a previously unknown biological mechanism: how tissues detect and respond to damage in basement membranes, the thin layers of extracellular matrix that surround and support nearly every organ in the body. The research, published in Developmental Cell, is the first to show how local cells sense and respond to changes in basement membrane stiffness caused by damage—and how they activate a previously unknown set of “matrix mender” cells to repair the tissue. Read More

This spring, the Margaret Cuninggim Women’s Center to honor six individuals from the Vanderbilt community during its annual awards. Read More

Vanderbilt University’s new Center for Computational Systems Biology brings computer science, engineering and biomedical researchers together with clinicians at Vanderbilt University Medical Center to accelerate discovery related to human diseases and conditions. Read More

Thirteen innovative projects across seven colleges and schools have been selected for the spring 2024 round of Seeding Success internal grants. The Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Innovation announced the recipient list on May 31. Read More

Thirteen outstanding faculty members from across the university have been selected for the 2024 cohort of Chancellor Faculty Fellows. This group is composed of highly accomplished, recently tenured faculty from a wide variety of disciplines and areas of expertise.    Read More

Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers have discovered why most colorectal tumors escape detection and destruction by the body’s immune system. Read More

Using a four-dimensional microscope that allows them to watch a tissue putting itself together, researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have achieved a rare feat in science — they have shattered a long-standing dogma about how the lung develops. Read More

Vanderbilt investigators have discovered a molecular mechanism that promotes chronic kidney disease following kidney injury. Read More