School Of Medicine Basic Sciences

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

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

Research led by Matthew Tyska gives new insight into the formation of the lining of the gut that helps us absorb nutrients and guard against illness. Read More

An immune cell called CD8+ is supposed to attack disease, but it can also contribute to inflammation, which can lead to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Read More

Kasey Vickers has developed a new analytical method for to study small RNAs, a poorly understood component of the genome. Read More

New research by an international team that includes Vanderbilt researchers shows how a common diabetes drug blocks glucose production by the liver, suggesting new avenues for treatment. Read More

There’s promise in specific immune system peptides—amino acid compounds that signal cells how to function. In this case, they may be affecting brain activity and, by extension, drug cravings. Read More

James Galligan and Lawrence Marnett have discovered a new histone modification that can affect gene expression. Read More

A newly discovered role for the "Sonic the Hedgehog" protein in the proper development of the cerebellum. Read More

New research by Masoud Ghamari-Langroudi and colleagues has revealed that a certain brain protein called MC3R plays a role in causing the body to reset its "ideal" weight. Read More

Modern statistical tools are not very accurate when it comes to predicting the discrete and non-symmetric behaviors of individual cells. Gregor Neuert and colleagues say that's because the wrong tools are being used. Read More