Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center

Uniting Against Lung Cancer, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding innovative lung cancer research in the United States and Canada, has awarded a $100,000 grant to Christine Lovly, M.D., Ph.D., a fellow in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. The two-year grant will fund Lovly’s research on better treatment options for a subset [...]

Paula Hart was just 46 when she starting having shortness of breath, along with a nagging cough and intermittent pain in her left shoulder. After a trip to the emergency room in her hometown of Evansville, Ind., and a series of additional tests, doctors finally diagnosed Hart with non-small cell lung cancer. The cancer was [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center has become the first cancer center in the Southeast and one of the first in the nation to offer adult cancer patients routine “genotyping” of their tumors at the DNA level. The recently launched Personalized Cancer Medicine Initiative will personalize cancer treatment by matching the appropriate therapy to the genetic changes, or [...]

I’m no fan of smoking. In fact, I wish we could reduce the smoking rate in this country to zero. Even if this wish were to come true, between 15,000 and 25,000 Americans would still die of lung cancer each year. Tobacco use is a key issue in lung cancer. The link between smoking and [...]

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, and between 10 percent and 15 percent of new cases arise in never-smokers. Never-smokers – as well as individuals of East-Asian ethnicity and those with adenocarcinoma tumors – appear more likely to respond to certain targeted therapies. William Pao, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues at Fudan [...]

A clinical trial of a new experimental therapy for metastatic melanoma being tested at Vanderbilt and several other medical centers has shown positive results, including tumor shrinkage in the majority of patients. The results support previously reported positive data for the drug, known as PLX4032 (RG7204), in a much larger patient population where all responses [...]

The National Cancer Institute has awarded two Early Detection Research Network (EDRN) grants to a group of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center investigators to support early detection of lung and colon cancers. Pierre Massion, M.D., associate professor of Medicine and Cancer Biology, has been awarded $3 million over five years for the creation of the Vanderbilt Clinical [...]