Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center

Pelayo Correa, M.D., professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunulogy, has been recognized by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and its Minorities in Cancer Research membership group with the Jane Cooke Wright Lectureship. Correa holds the Anne Potter Wilson chair in cancer research in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition. The AACR-MICR-Jane Cooke [...]

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center researchers have identified a new population of intestinal stem cells that may hold clues to the origin of colorectal cancer. This new stem cell population, reported March 30 in the journal Cell, appears to be relatively quiescent (inactive) – in contrast to the recent discovery of intestinal stem cells that multiply rapidly [...]

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center investigators have won two of the five global innovation grants awarded by the “GE Healthymagination Cancer Challenge.” The grants were awarded to Jennifer Pietenpol, Ph.D., director of VICC, and the My Cancer Genome project, developed by Mia Levy, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics, and William Pao, M.D., Ph.D., [...]

Melanoma patients who are treated with new oral drugs inhibiting the BRAF gene are at increased risk for developing secondary skin cancers. A new study co-authored by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center investigators and researchers from 12 other cancer centers discovered clues that may explain what is triggering these secondary cancers. VICC’s Igor Puzanov, M.D., assistant professor [...]

Becker’s Hospital Review has named Vanderbilt University Medical Center to its list of 70 Hospitals and Health Systems with Great Oncology Programs. These hospitals are deemed to be on the cutting edge of cancer treatment, prevention and research, and the Becker’s Hospital Review editorial team selected them based on clinical accolades, quality care and contributions [...]

The April program for My Health Chat will be the promising world of cancer drug discovery. Panelists will be Lawrence Marnett, Ph.D., director of the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology, and Stephen Fesik, Ph.D., director of drug discovery at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. They will be discussing and taking questions about how information about the genetic [...]

Smoking contributes to the vast majority (around 85 percent) of lung cancer cases. The TGF-beta signaling pathway – which regulates cell growth and proliferation – is altered in several cancer types, but little is known about how smoking affects this pathway. To investigate this, Debangshu Samanta, Pran Datta, Ph.D., and colleagues exposed human lung epithelial [...]

Understanding DNA replication and DNA damage responses – which must proceed faithfully to prevent diseases such as cancer – requires the ability to monitor protein dynamics at active and damaged replication forks (sites of DNA duplication). Existing methods for studying replication fork machinery have been limited in resolution and sensitivity. Now, David Cortez, Ph.D., and [...]

Kathy Leiser first heard about Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center’s lung cancer screening trial through a sponsorship ad on WPLN radio last summer. The Nashville office technology saleswoman and grandmother of three had stopped smoking in 2009, but she knew her smoking history put her at risk for lung cancer. So she enrolled in the screening trial, [...]

Endometrial cancer, or cancer of the uterine lining, is the most common gynecological malignancy. Obesity – defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher – is a well-established risk factor for endometrial cancer, with obese women having a 4- to 6-times higher risk of the malignancy than nonobese women. Ryan Delahanty, Ph.D., [...]