Ken Lau

The Vanderbilt Innovation Catalyst Fund, launched in 2023, bridges the gap between academic research and real-world applications by supporting projects with commercial and societal potential. To date, the fund has completed six award cycles, distributing 39 grants to VU and VUMC awardees across diverse disciplines. Read More

Three Vanderbilt faculty members are diving into a "chicken-and-egg" problem of type 2 diabetes: Does the disease change beta-cell subtypes? Or do changes in the cells cause diabetes? Guoqiang Gu, Emily Hodges and Ken Lau have come up with a new method of studying the subtypes that can track them through different stages instead of just once when they're fully developed. "Thanks to this and other research, it may be possible to one day create a diet supplement for pregnancy that could reduce the risk of diabetes for babies," Gu said. 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

Ken Lau, professor of cell and developmental biology, and colleagues have laid out the principles governing the biology of early, precancerous lesions, which are different from the principles that govern cancers. Their authoritative perspective was published in Cancer Discovery in April 2024. 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

Four Vanderbilt graduate students, faculty advisers named to Howard Hughes Medical Institute Gilliam Fellows Program for their leadership in science and commitment to advancing equity and inclusion in science. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers are studying precancerous lesions and early cancers in the colon, with the goal of developing new ways to prevent colorectal cancer, the nation’s second leading cancer killer. Read More

A new method that keeps microbes and gut cells together will be useful for studies of complex host-microbe interactions and for analysis of clinical specimens. Read More

Vanderbilt cell biologists have developed an unbiased, quantitative framework for evaluating single-cell data. Read More

Ken Lau and Guoqiang Gu have identified a critical biomarker in determining how a pancreatic progenitor cell will develop. Read More

Qi Liu, PhD, Ken Lau, PhD, and colleagues have developed a new tool, sc-UniFrac, to quantify diverse cell types in single-cell studies. Read More

A trans-institutional team of researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt University has received an $11 million Cancer Moonshot grant to build a single-cell resolution atlas to map out the routes that benign colonic polyps take to progress to colorectal cancer, the third most common cancer among both men and women in the United States. Read More

Vanderbilt investigators have developed an algorithm to classify cell types from experimental data, making it possible to understand how organs develop. Read More

A new method for analyzing cells in fixed biopsy tissues from patients by guide personalized treatment strategies for cancer. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers have developed a new method to study cell signaling networks at single-cell resolution. Read More

Ken Lau, Ph.D., a new assistant professor in Cell and Developmental Biology, is out to determine the rules that lead to cells converting from one type to another, for example, when a healthy cell becomes a cancer cell. Read More