Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center

An uncommon mutation of the BRAF gene in melanoma patients has been found to respond to MEK inhibitor drugs, providing a rationale for routine screening and therapy in melanoma patients who harbor the BRAF L597 mutation. The new study by co-first-authors Kimberly Brown Dahlman, Ph.D., Junfeng Xia, Ph.D., and Katherine Hutchinson, B.S., Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center [...]

An experimental drug that activates T-cells and promotes an immune response to fight tumors has shown promising early results in patients with kidney cancer, melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer. Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center investigators Leora Horn, M.D., Jeffrey Sosman, M.D., and researchers from several other cancer centers tested the new compound. The results of the [...]

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 [...]

Investigators from Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and 12 other centers in the United States and Australia have found that a new drug for patients with metastatic melanoma nearly doubled median overall survival. More than half of patients who were treated with the novel drug vemurafenib, known commercially as Zelboraf, responded to treatment and experienced an impressive [...]

Investigators at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and several other centers may be one step closer to finding out why some melanoma patients relapse after treatment with a promising new drug. Approximately half of all patients with the most deadly form of skin cancer have a mutation in the BRAF gene in their tumors that drives the [...]

Jeffrey Sosman, M.D., professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC), has been named to a melanoma research Dream Team of cancer investigators supported by Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) and the Melanoma Research Alliance (MRA). Sosman is among the Dream Team’s principal investigators who will work closely to write the genomic-driven clinical trials and [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

A new documentary about the exciting era of personalized medicine and health care is now available on YouTube. Your Genome and the Future of Medicine, developed by Vanderbilt University Medical Center, initially aired on local stations in Lexington, Ky., and Nashville, Tenn. The 30-minute documentary, available for viewing in four segments, features interviews with several [...]