Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center

Stephen Fesik, Ph.D., professor of Biochemistry, Pharmacology and Chemistry, has received a $2.5 million grant to fund research on drugs for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. The three-year award from the Lustgarten Foundation will support Fesik’s work on targeting K-Ras, a protein that is mutated in 90 percent of pancreatic cancer patients. Approximately 43,140 patients [...]

Curcumin – the active ingredient that flavors curries and gives the Indian spice turmeric its yellow color – is being studied for its ability to prevent tumor development. Its efficacy, however, is limited by chemical and metabolic instability. Previous studies have focused on the non-enzymatic (not mediated by a protein) cleavage of curcumin into smaller [...]

Nashville, Tenn. – Seven Vanderbilt University faculty members, including 6 who are members of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, have been elected Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an honor bestowed upon them by their AAAS peers. They are among 503 AAAS members from around the country who achieved this honor [...]

Tabula Rasa, the School of Medicine’s journal of medical humanities, is now accepting submissions for its 2010-2011 issue. The theme of this year’s journal is “Transformation: How Illness and Healing Change Us.” All submissions that meet the criteria (see below) will be featured on the Tabula Rasa website, and many of the selected submissions will [...]

Update as of Thursday, Jan. 6: Call Center staff have been relocated to temporary locations, with phones and computers, so our service has been restored. Thanks to everyone for their patience while we addressed this unexpected situation. Kudos to our team for their dedication to finding a way to get back on line for our [...]

Editor’s note: Cynthia Floyd Manley, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center’s associate director for communications, will appear on Lifetime Television’s The Balancing Act on Monday, Jan. 3, to discuss social networking for cancer survivors and caregivers. Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center has joined with the national CancerConnect.com initiative to launch a new online community for people impacted by cancer. As [...]

Cousins with melanoma caused by the same genetic mutation enroll in a randomized clinical trial of a promising experimental drug that targets the mutation. Randomly assigned to different groups, one young man gets the new drug, experiences dramatic shrinkage of his tumors and is alive nine months later, while his cousin receives current therapy — [...]

Patients with metastatic melanoma being treated with the new investigational cancer drug PLX4032 are showing strong responses, with an 80 percent anti-tumor response rate among patients whose tumors are positive for the B-RAF (V600E) gene mutation. However, in all too many cases, patients are developing resistance to the drug and their cancer is beginning to [...]

Proteins called HDACs are the targets of a new class of anti-cancer compounds (HDAC inhibitors). How these compounds kill tumor cells — and the potential side effects of such drugs — are still open questions. Scott Hiebert, Ph.D., and colleagues at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center have now discovered that mice missing a particular HDAC (pronounced h-dack) [...]

Picture a railroad track, running across the countryside. DNA looks something like that track. Its “rails” are chains of chemicals called nucleotides, each pairing with a partner on the opposite chain to form the “ties.” To ensure timely train traffic – and prevent catastrophic derailments – the railroad track needs regular maintenance. So does DNA. [...]