Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center

Lauren Hackett, MPA, has been named executive director for cancer research administration at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. Hackett has 19 years of experience in research administration, most recently at New York University Cancer Institute, where she has served as executive director for administration since 2004. She held similar roles with the Yale School of Medicine and [...]

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center has opened a free-standing cancer clinic in Green Hills to give cancer patients more options for their oncology care. VICC Green Hills provides many of the same services available at the main VICC campus, including access to board-certified cancer physicians and specially trained oncology nurses and pharmacists. Patients can see an oncologist, [...]

News that the Food and Drug Administration had approved a new targeted drug for advanced melanoma was heralded as good news this week by physician-scientists at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, which was involved in many of the studies that helped lead to the approval. “This is a bright day for many melanoma patients,” said Dr. Jeffrey [...]

Breast cancer patients at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center can now have their tumor tissue tested for gene mutations that are important for treatment decisions. Information from genetic tests in the tumors will be used to match patients to the best cancer therapies available, including drugs that are in early clinical trial testing. Tumor mutation testing for [...]

Rally Foundation, a national non-profit organization committed to childhood cancer research, has awarded an $80,000 grant to the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. The two-year grant will fund a research study on the treatment of neuroblastoma, a cancer that forms in the nervous tissue and primarily affects infants and young children. “We appreciate [...]

Kyle Weaver, M.D., assistant professor of Neurological Surgery, has received the Preuss Award from the Joint Section on Tumors of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS). The Preuss Award is given to a young scientist investigating brain tumors who submitted the best basic science research paper. First [...]

For the first time, Vanderbilt is providing specialized services for patients who are experiencing lymphedema, a chronic debilitating condition which is the result of an accumulation of protein-rich fluid in tissues. The fluid retention can cause severe swelling, pain, skin ulcerations and impaired mobility, and once present, the condition continues to progress. The new Vanderbilt [...]

Onlookers cheered early on the morning of Saturday, May 7, as a shattering champagne bottle christened the delivery of a $5 million, 7.5-ton magnet to Vanderbilt University. The magnet is the main part of an ultra-high field, 900 megahertz nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer that will help researchers solve the mysteries of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease [...]

On Mother’s Day 2008, Marcia Akers was expecting a traditional Mother’s Day gift from her children. Instead, she received a piercing pain, like a lightning bolt streaking down the right side of her body. The seizure resulted in a trip to a Nashville hospital where tests revealed a golf ball-size tumor in her brain. Doctors [...]

William Pao, M.D., Ph.D., and Fernando Polack, M.D., have been elected into one of the nation’s most respected medical honor societies — the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). Pao, the Ingram Associate Professor of Cancer Research, and Polack, the Cesar Milstein Associate Professor of Pediatrics, were among 70 new members introduced at the ASCI [...]