National Cancer Institute

Kimryn Rathmell, MD, PhD, MMHC, Hugh Jackson Professor of Medicine and chair of the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, will be appointed director of the National Cancer Institute. Through this upcoming appointment, Rathmell will become the NCI’s 17th director and only the second woman to hold this position leading the nation’s fight against cancer. She was chosen to serve in this role by President Biden. Read More

Kimryn Rathmell, MD, PhD, MMHC, the Hugh Jackson Professor of Medicine and chair of the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, will be appointed Director of the National Cancer Institute. Read More

Vanderbilt's Andreana Holowatyj, PhD, MSCI, has received the National Cancer Institute’s Method to Extend Research in Time Award to support her ongoing investigation into how early-onset colorectal cancer and its treatments impact reproductive health. Read More

An international collaboration led by biochemist David Cortez reached revelatory conclusions in exploration of how cells tolerate DNA damage and genome instability. Est. reading time: 2 mins. 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

Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering John Wilson has received a $3 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to develop technology that seeks to boost a person’s immune system to better fight cancer. Read More

John Wilson, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Vanderbilt University, has received a $3 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to develop technology that seeks to boost a person’s immune system to better fight cancer. Wilson is the Principal Investigator of the five-year grant. He specializes in the study of cancer immunotherapy... Read More

A collaborative project between William Tansey and Stephen Fesik has laid the foundation for pre-clinical and clinical trials for rare childhood tumors that are diagnosed in 25 children per year in the United States. Read More

Melanoma is the fifth most-common type of cancer in the U.S., and according to the American Cancer Society, about half of patients with malignant melanoma have mutations of the BRAF gene. Identification of potential tumor biomarkers such as SOX10 can help physicians better predict outcomes for their patients.  Read More

By Aaron Conley Systems biology and the Lopez lab The history of hermeneutics started with Aristotle—parts comprise the whole. To understand the whole, we need to understand the parts. And to understand the parts, we need to understand them in the context of the whole. Carlos F. Lopez, associate… Read More

A biomedical engineering professor has received a $1.9 million NIH grant to investigate the effects of mechanical stimuli such as shear stress on the behavior of cancer cells in blood flow. J. Lawrence Wilson Professor Mike King and his research group will develop the devices for the study as well as new cell lines to... Read More

A biomedical engineering professor has received a $1.9 million NIH grant to investigate the effects of mechanical stimuli such as shear stress on the behavior of cancer cells in blood flow. J. Lawrence Wilson Professor Mike King and his research group will develop the devices for the study as well as new cell lines to... Read More

People with a high polygenic risk score for colorectal cancer could benefit more at preventing the disease by leading healthy lifestyles than those at lower genetic risk, according to a study by Vanderbilt researchers published in the April issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Read More

A new genome-wide CRISPR screening technique conducted by researchers at Vanderbilt University is offering new insights about how tumors in 80 to 90 percent of all cancers grow. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers have received a National Cancer Institute grant to develop a novel, integrative approach to detect early signs of lung cancer. The four-year project builds on a related, recent study that established the value of using three separate measures—structural imaging, a protein marker and information available from electronic health records—to predict lung cancer 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

Rebecca Ihrie and Jonathan Irish are leading the development of machine learning applications for brain cancer research. Read More

Zhijun Yin, PhD, assistant professor of Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, has received the National Cancer Institute’s Method to Extend Research in Time Award (or MERIT Award) for Early Stage Investigators. Read More

A multidisciplinary team of investigators at Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center has received a program project grant from the National Cancer Institute to explore extracellular RNA in colorectal cancer. Read More

Researchers from Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) discovered a role for MYCN in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), a particularly aggressive form of the disease, and identified a potential intervention for further clinical investigation. Read More