School Of Medicine Basic Sciences

Vanderbilt Eye Institute researchers have discovered that an imbalance in the ionic environment of retinal ganglion cells may contribute to functional impairments in glaucoma. Read More

A new imaging method makes it possible to directly measure cell division and changes in metabolism in atherosclerotic plaques. Read More

Larry Marnett and colleagues have developed what may become the first agent for targeted PET imaging of cancer tissues, such as ovarian cancer, that express high levels of the COX-1 enzyme. Read More

Understanding how a steroid-metabolizing enzyme binds to its substrates may aid in designing drugs to treat sexual dysfunction as well as prostate cancer. Read More

Scott Baldwin and colleagues have discovered early signaling events during heart development, findings that could guide cell replacement therapies for heart disease. Read More

Vsevolod Gurevich and colleagues have discovered new insights into arrestin proteins, which turn off a cell's environmental message "inbox." Read More

Stimulating the vagus nerve triggers certain epigenetic changes involving learning and memory. Read More

David Cortez and colleagues have discovered a new DNA repair mechanism. Read More

Danny Winder and colleagues have demonstrated how norepinephrine and a stress factor call CRF interact, which may lead to new treatments for stress-related disorders. Read More

Lawrence Marnett and colleagues have demonstrated how two enzymes cooperate to maintain even levels of an important cellular signaling molecule. Read More

Inhibiting COX-2 — an enzyme associated with inflammation — could provide a novel therapeutic approach for stress-related psychiatric disorders. Read More

A team led by biomolecular engineer John Wilson and cancer biologist Rebecca Cook have found a way to trigger an immune response that targets breast cancer cells. Read More

Craig Lindsley, co-director of the Vanderbilt Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery, has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Read More

New research led by Rebecca Cook demonstrates that an antiviral receptor called RIG-I has potent immunogenic and therapeutic effects in breast cancer. Read More

New research led by Alyssa Hasty shows that diet-induced weight loss in obese individuals increases levels of a white blood cell that promotes metabolic health in fatty tissues, but not in the liver. Read More

Mukhtar Ahmed and colleagues say the methods they employed to understand the mechanisms by which exocysts--protein complexes essential to life--function have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of cell dynamics. Read More

New research by John Karijolich and colleagues have found that RNA, not viruses, activate the sentry enzymes that serve as the first line of defense against viruses. Read More

A complete map of gene expression for the worm may help address broad questions in neuroscience about how gene expression programs establish diverse sets of neurons and how genetic differences contribute to neuronal function in healthy and disease conditions. 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

Loss of a protein that regulates mitochondrial function can greatly increase the risk of a heart attack, report Eric Gamazon, Sandra Zinkel and graduate students Christie Salisbury-Ruf and Clinton Bertram in new research. Read More