Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center

Nearly half the world’s population is colonized by the gut bacterium Helicobacter pylori. Not only can this infection cause stomach ulcers and increase one’s risk of gastric cancer, colonization can also significantly slow growth in children. Antibiotic treatment to clear H. pyloriinfection causes growth to rebound in the short term, but it is unclear whether [...]

Head and neck cancers have repeatedly been linked to infection with human papillomavirus (HPV), with more than half of oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) positive for HPV. Interestingly, HPV-positive HNSCCs respond better to radiation therapy and have a better prognosis than HPV-negative tumors. But the molecular pathways responsible for their different sensitivities are unclear. In [...]

Stephen Fesik, Ph.D., professor of Biochemistry, Pharmacology and Chemistry at Vanderbilt, will receive the 2012 AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Cancer Research. Fesik, who holds the Orrin H. Ingram II chair in cancer research, will receive the special recognition during the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in Chicago March [...]

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 [...]