Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center has joined with the national CancerConnect.com initiative to launch a new online support community for people impacted by cancer, including patients, family members, friends and advocates. Participants don’t have to be a Vanderbilt-Ingram patient or family member to join the online community. There they can share stories, ask questions and learn from [...]

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 [...]

Sheila Bates, L.C.S.W., community outreach manager in Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center’s Office of Patient and Community Education, has been named the Rural Health Worker of the Year by the Rural Health Association of Tennessee. Bates was nominated for her work in the development of the “Cancer Queens! A Cancer Prevention Musical Revue.” The live “edutainment” program, [...]

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center’s Oncology Clinic in Cool Springs makes patient care its priority, and provides a strong example of why the Medical Center is deserving of a second Magnet designation. Though the clinic is 16 miles from the main Vanderbilt University Medical Center campus, the culture of this suburban clinic embodies the VUMC Nursing philosophy [...]

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 Vanderbilt Breast Center is inviting cancer patients to a free counseling session designed to help women cope with cancer treatment side-effects such as hair loss and complexion changes. The class is open to patients with all forms of cancer. The “Look Good…Feel Better” class will be held Wednesday, Nov. 17, from 10 a.m. to [...]