Ken Lau

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 Vanderbilt study found that the bacterium Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile) may be a previously unrecognized contributor to colorectal cancer. Read More

A team of Vanderbilt researchers led by Ken Lau has revealed some of the mechanisms by which polyps develop into colorectal cancer, setting the framework for improved surveillance for the cancer utilizing precision medicine. Read More

Research from scientists at the School of Medicine Basic Sciences and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies shows that cells in the pancreas form new cell types to mitigate injury but are then susceptible to cancerous mutations. Read More

Vanderbilt engineers have received a $1.49 million National Science Foundation grant to advance the science of organoids with cells that organize themselves and mimic the development of human brain structures. 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

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. Read More

Ten outstanding faculty members from across the university have been selected for the 2020 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 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

Biochemistry professor Richard Caprioli, director of the Mass Spectrometry Research Center, and Jeff Spraggins, research assistant professor of biochemistry, and their team will build a platform to molecularly characterize cells. 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

Six faculty-led teams have received 2018 Microbiome Venture Fund awards to pursue projects related to the broad category of microbiomes—the totality of microbes in or on an environment. 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