School Of Medicine Basic Sciences

For graduate students and postdoctoral fellows contemplating their next career steps, the possibilities can seem both exciting and overwhelming. The Vanderbilt University Office of Biomedical Research Education and Training’s 2026 Annual Career Symposium offered a roadmap to those possibilities, bringing together alums and professionals from across the biomedical enterprise to demonstrate the breadth of careers available to scientists beyond the traditional academic pathway. Read More

At the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Basic Sciences, researchers are advancing neuroscience discoveries through molecular biology, pharmacology, drug discovery, and more. Their work seeks to understand how the brain functions in health and disease, identify new therapeutic targets, and develop innovative treatments for conditions ranging from Alzheimer’s and addiction to depression and epilepsy. Read More

Blood sugar spikes after lunch aren’t necessarily all about what you just ate—what you had for breakfast might have made a difference. Vanderbilt researchers are analyzing what people eat, and when, and how that affects liver function and blood sugar and insulin levels throughout the day. This may help clinicians better design individual treatments for patients with diabetes. Read More

Eleven of Vanderbilt University’s most promising recently tenured faculty have been awarded spots in the 2026 Chancellor Faculty Fellows program. This year’s recipients demonstrate exceptional and innovative scholarly achievement. “These scholars represent the next generation of academic leaders, advancing the bold ideas and transformative research that are strengthening Vanderbilt’s… Read More

Anonymous donors have committed $25 million to build a bold new hub of innovation and discovery at Vanderbilt University—a multipurpose science facility that will shape the future of research and education on campus and beyond. Read More

Martin Egli, the Richard N. Armstrong, Ph.D. Professor of Innovation in Biochemistry and a professor of biochemistry at the School of Medicine Basic Sciences, delivered a Kairos Lecture on May 28. Egli’s work, which has resulted in over 300 publications and two influential nucleic acid textbooks, has advanced strategies to stabilize RNA for therapeutic applications, including siRNA. He has received major honors and extensively served his department and the university. Read More

The Vanderbilt University Center for Structural Biology and Center for AI in Protein Dynamics recently hosted a symposium called “Bridging Atoms and Algorithms: A Symposium on AI and Structural Biology.” The March event brought together Vanderbilt faculty, trainees, and invited speakers to explore the intersection of artificial intelligence and structural biology, share research, and foster new scientific collaborations. Read More

Postdocs Andrew Rice and Yanqing Xue, in the biochemistry lab of Professor Doug Mitchell, discovered which enzyme is responsible for a rare chemical modification that doesn’t exist in human cells. That could be crucial for developing antibiotics that can target bacteria while leaving human hosts’ cells completely alone. Read More

PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” have already been linked to disruptions in thyroid hormones, among other detrimental health effects. A recent paper by first author Heather Hartmann, a Ph.D. student in the lab of Associate Professor Vivian Weiss, dug into thyroid cell behavior under long-term exposure to PFAS. It finds that the chemicals alter cellular function, including signaling pathways that are involved in cancer. “We hope [this] can help people who are already at risk for thyroid cancer … make better-informed choices, as consumers, to limit exposure to these chemicals,” Hartmann said. Read More

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

Read what inspires and motivates these graduate and professional students to make a positive impact. Read More

For centuries, the human brain has intrigued scientists and philosophers alike. It stores our memories and shapes our behavior—the center of learning, emotion and identity. Yet even after decades of research, much about how the brain works remains a mystery. “People have been fascinated with questions of how you learn and who you are—philosophical questions that all come back to processes in the brain,” says Lisa Monteggia, Lee E. Limbird Professor in Pharmacology and the Barlow Family Director of the Vanderbilt Brain Institute. Now neuroscience is at a watershed moment, with new tools poised to dramatically expand understanding of the central nervous system.   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

Gentle caress, searing burn, jolting shock. All these are possible with the elemental power of touch. Read how Shan Meltzer studies touch from the cellular level through the nervous system to the brain, to find better ways to treat pain and physical injuries. Read More

Vanderbilt’s undergraduate, graduate and professional schools are taking on the challenges of an ever-evolving world with dozens of new courses and programs for the 2026–27 school year. Here are some of the new academic ways the university is preparing students to combine knowledge and vision to create future impact. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers are hunting down ways to combat Alzheimer’s by developing compounds that affect the proteins that are linked to it. TAOK-1 is such a protein, but it has not been thoroughly studied because there wasn’t a “tool compound” to study it with. Former postdoctoral fellow Daniel Schultz and Ph.D. student Lauren Parr have developed two such compounds—one that inhibits TAOK-1, and another that activates the entire TAOK protein family—through work conducted in the WCNDD, led by Executive Director Craig Lindsley. 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

For patients with advanced melanoma without BRAF mutation who no longer respond to immune checkpoint inhibitors, treatment options remain frustratingly limited. A new study from Vanderbilt researchers led by Professor Emerita of Pharmacology Ann Richmond outlines a promising therapeutic strategy that may re-sensitize these resistant tumors to immunotherapy. Read More

Vanderbilt University has announced its fall 2025 recipients of the Seeding Success, Scaling Success and Rapid-Advancement MicroGrant Program awards, providing internal funding to help faculty launch new research directions, strengthen proposals and compete for major external grants. Read More

Research into combating cocaine addiction has been limited by the difficulty in structuring accurate animal models; standard practice relies on implanting IV catheters that the animals can use to self-dose. Now Assistant Professor Cody Siciliano's lab has devised a method that more closely mimics cocaine use in humans—effectively, a way for the animals to snort cocaine. This makes the animal model more analogous to human experience, and it reduces surgical and intravenous procedures for the animals. "This model provides a powerful framework for linking motivated drug use with real-time neural activity, offering new opportunities to study the circuitry underlying reinforcement and decision-making," Siciliano said. Read More