New clinical laboratory facility debuts
A new VUMC clinical laboratory facility opened for business following a relocation to a 110,000-square-foot facility in MetroCenter. The new lab is located approximately 5 miles from VUMC’s main Nashville campus.
The new laboratory more than doubles the space of VUMC’s prior laboratory and expands the workspace of more than 350 laboratory personnel.
At this facility more than 550 tests can now be performed under one roof. Services are focused on outpatient and specialized testing, including histology, cytology, hematopathology, molecular diagnostics, infectious diseases and genomic testing, as well as expansion of testing services to external clients.
Jim Ayers Tower
VUMC named the new expansion tower for Vanderbilt University Hospital the Jim Ayers Tower in recognition of Janet and Jim Ayers’ philanthropic legacy and abiding interest in improving the health care and quality of life for Tennesseans.
The naming of the 15-level, 470,000-square-foot tower, currently under construction between 21st Avenue South and Medical Center Drive on the Main Campus in Nashville, honors the couple’s steadfast community leadership and longtime connection to VUMC. The tower is scheduled to open its first floor — Level 7 — in October 2025.
Previously unreported genetic variations revealed
An analysis of genomic data from nearly 250,000 participants in the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program identified more than 275 million previously unreported genetic variations, nearly 4 million of which have potential health consequences.
The data constitutes a research resource unprecedented in its scale and diversity, as 77% of the participants historically have been underrepresented in biomedical research, and 46% are from underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities.
Record year for transplants
The Vanderbilt Transplant Center performed a record number of solid organ transplants in fiscal year 2024 — 809 lifesaving procedures among its adult and pediatric programs.
The adult program performed 760 transplants, and the pediatric program completed 49 transplants during the fiscal year, which ran from July 2023 until the end of June 2024.
Neonatal medicine pioneer mourned
Mildred T. Stahlman, MD, who pioneered the treatment of lung disease in premature infants and who was a tireless advocate of children of all ages, died June 29. She was 101.
Dr. Stahlman, professor of Pediatrics and Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, is credited with establishing at VUMC the nation’s first newborn intensive care unit to use monitored respiratory therapy in babies born with damaged lungs.
Dr. Stahlman established Vanderbilt’s Division of Neonatology, the subspecialty of Pediatrics that deals with the care of infants immediately after birth. In the mid-1970s, she helped regionalize newborn intensive care services in Tennessee, and she trained generations of physician-scientists from around the world.
VUMC joins national effort to prevent another pandemic
VUMC joined an extraordinary national effort to develop and stockpile new vaccines and antibody therapies against a host of viral threats to prevent another pandemic.
Pending the availability of funds, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health expects to commit approximately $100 million a year to the program, called ReVAMPP, for Research and Development of Vaccines and Monoclonal Antibodies for Pandemic Preparedness.
Developed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which killed millions of people worldwide and cost the United States economy trillions of dollars, ReVAMPP supports a coordinating center and seven research centers, including VUMC, with a focus on nine virus groups that pose the greatest risk to human health.
VUMC’s three-year, $13 million per year grant enables researchers at the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center to accelerate their investigations of bunyaviruses, which include life-threatening respiratory and hemorrhagic fever viruses, and picornaviruses, notably enterovirus D68.
Study of severe drug reactions finds skin cells activate their own assassins
Led by researchers from VUMC in Nashville and Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, a study used multiomic single-cell sequencing to provide new insights into the immunopathogenesis and cellular and molecular signaling pathways driving the rare but life-threatening adverse drug reactions Stevens-Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis (SJS/TEN).
Considered parts of the same disease across a spectrum of severity, SJS, SJS/TEN overlap syndrome, and TEN cause the skin to blister and peel off, like severe burns.
Alliance for Genomic Discovery grows
Nashville Biosciences, LLC, a leading clinical and genomic data company and wholly owned subsidiary of VUMC, in collaboration with Illumina Inc., a global leader in DNA sequencing and array-based technologies, announced three new members of the Alliance for Genomic Discovery.
Bristol Myers Squibb, GSK and Novo Nordisk joined founding member organizations AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer and Merck. Together the pharma members co-fund the whole-genome sequencing of 250,000 DNA samples and have access to the resulting data for use in drug discovery and therapeutic development.
Rett syndrome grant
VUMC received a $13 million Department of Defense grant to lead a multisite clinical trial that will evaluate repurposed FDA-approved drugs as treatment options for patients with Rett syndrome.
Affecting 1 in 10,000 females at birth, and males even more rarely, Rett syndrome is a rare genetic neurodevelopmental disorder that affects brain development.
C. Wright Pinson named to Tennessee Health Care Hall of Fame
C. Wright Pinson, MBA, MD, Deputy CEO and Chief Health System Officer for VUMC, was named to this year’s class of the Tennessee Health Care Hall of Fame at an induction ceremony held in October at Belmont University.
Throughout his career, which has spanned multiple facets of health care, Pinson has been one of Tennessee’s most visible and active members of the medical community. In addition to his administrative leadership roles for VUMC, he has spent his career as an organ transplant surgeon, professor, mentor and community advocate advancing health care delivery at the local, state, national and international levels.
A transplant first
In the first such procedure, VUMC transplanted a DCD (donation after cardiac death) heart using XVIVO Heart Assist Transport, a novel cold organ perfusion device. The transplant was completed under the direction of Ashish Shah, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Cardiac Surgery, as part of a multi-institutional clinical trial.
Over the last four years, Vanderbilt’s heart transplant program has been a leader in utilizing hearts from DCD donors, hearts that were previously discarded because they were determined to be too injured and too high risk for subsequent problems.
VI4 expansion
The Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation (VI4) continued to grow with the opening of renovated research space.
The state-of-the-art facilities in Medical Center North represent a third phase in the expansion of facilities for the institute, which was created in 2017 as a key initiative of the VUMC Strategic Directions. VI4 provides a transinstitutional framework for growing and supporting the community of investigators at VUMC and Vanderbilt University who are involved in research related to immunology and infectious diseases.
Resource for pancreatic data fosters diabetes research
Leading investigators in diabetes, pancreas and islet biology, and computational biology received $12.5 million in two five-year awards from the National Institutes of Health to create the world’s first integrated knowledge base of human-derived tissue- and cellular-level pancreatic information to support innovative, collaborative and reproducible research.
The creation of the Pancreas Knowledgebase (PanKbase) program plays a key role in organizing, standardizing and disseminating data and resources focused on the human pancreas.
ADVANCE Center launched
The Department of Biomedical Informatics launched its groundbreaking center for health Artificial Intelligence (AI) — ADVANCE (AI Discovery and Vigilance to Accelerate Innovation and Clinical Excellence). The ADVANCE Center represents a pivotal milestone in the evolution of innovations at the intersection of health care, biomedicine and informatics, and aims to transform patient care, research and training through the power of cutting-edge, proven and trustworthy AI.
Brain atlas pinpoints vulnerabilities in ALS and dementia
Using donated postmortem human brain tissue, a study reported in Cell undertook cell-by-cell mapping and gene expression analysis to uncover genetic and transcriptional vulnerabilities and disease processes underlying two related neurological disorders, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD).
The report introduced a comparative single-cell molecular atlas of the human brain’s motor and prefrontal cortices, based on single-cell RNA sequencing using tissue samples from pathologically normal donors and donors with ALS or FTLD — 73 donors in all. The atlas includes neuronal, glial, vascular and immune cells.
Liver allocation policy change led to decreased transplant volumes
A major federal policy change in allocating donor livers four years ago led to decreased transplant volumes and increased hospital costs, particularly for transplant centers in lower-income states and those serving larger proportions of racial and ethnic minorities. Those were the main findings of a study published in JAMA Surgery with participation from VUMC.
The cross-sectional study compared two 12-month periods, one before and one after the United Network for Organ Sharing adopted a new liver allocation policy in February 2020. The new policy changed liver allocations from a regional service area to an “acuity circles” system that assigns donor livers as far as 500 nautical miles away based on the acuity of recipients. This disadvantaged transplant centers such as Vanderbilt, where regional donation rates are higher than in other parts of the country, particularly large urban centers in the Northeast.
Acute kidney injury study
A U.S.-Canadian research collaboration led by VUMC identified common, age-associated changes in the blood as a risk factor for acute kidney injury (AKI), which occurs in more than 1 in 5 hospitalized adults worldwide.
This discovery, reported in the journal Nature Medicine, could open the door to new, more effective treatments for AKI and a way to prevent its progression to end-stage renal disease requiring kidney dialysis.
Food allergy research consortium launched
VUMC was awarded a seven-year, $5 million award to conduct food allergy research, joining nine other institutions as part of the Consortium for Food Allergy Research.
Researchers Leonard Bacharier, MD, the Janie Robinson and John Moore Lee Professor of Pediatrics and section chief for Pediatric Allergy and Immunology, and Rachel Glick Robison, MD, associate professor of Pediatrics within the Division of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology and Pulmonology, serve as co-principal investigators for VUMC and Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt and establish a food allergy clinical research center.
Study finds atherosclerosis is a tumor-like disease
The fatty plaques that build up inside arteries in the disease atherosclerosis have features in common with tumors.
In a study published in the journal Circulation, researchers demonstrated that blood vessel smooth muscle cells change their identity and behave like cancer cells. An anticancer drug blunted atherosclerosis progression — and even made plaques shrink — in a mouse model of the disease, opening new opportunities for preventing and treating atherosclerosis.
Breast cancer finding
A study led by researchers from Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center shed light on some of the genetic variants that make breast cancer more deadly for women of African ancestry and significantly reduced the disparity in knowledge for assessing their genomic risk factors.
The study, published in Nature Genetics, was the largest genome-wide association study ever conducted among women of African ancestry for breast cancer. Analyzing 18,034 cases and 22,104 controls of African ancestry, researchers identified genetic variants at 12 loci associated with breast cancer risk at the genome-wide significant level. Of them, variants in three loci were associated with risk of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). Approximately 8% of African-ancestry women carry all six risk variants in these loci, and these women are 4.2 times more likely to be diagnosed with TNBC than those who carry none or only one of the variants.
Patient voices critical to success of artificial intelligence in health care
Artificial intelligence is transforming the world. But AI won’t fulfill its promise to make life better for everyone unless users, consumers and patients have a say in how it’s wielded.
That was one of the take-home messages of a symposium on health care AI held Nov. 5-6 at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Sponsored by VUMC’s Department of Biomedical Informatics, the symposium showcased the work of the department’s center for AI Discovery and Vigilance to Accelerate Innovation and Clinical Excellence (ADVANCE).
Language abilities, musical rhythm skills linked
In a groundbreaking study published Nov. 21 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, researchers uncovered significant genetic connections between human language abilities and musical rhythm skills, providing new insights into the biological underpinnings of these fundamental human traits.
The study revealed overlapping genetic underpinnings between rhythm-related skills and language-related traits, including dyslexia.
Improving battlefield care for combat-wounded military personnel
Investigators from VUMC are part of a national team that was awarded $18.2 million from the U.S. Department of Defense to develop advanced life-support components expected to improve battlefield care for combat-wounded military personnel.
VUMC site principal investigators Matthew Bacchetta, MD, MBA, and Rei Ukita, PhD, are leading efforts to evaluate the cannula and oxygenator for a novel advanced life-support system in a large animal model and to design and develop a prototype of the automated system.
PCORI awards
VUMC has received four new awards totaling $26.4 million from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), an independent, nonprofit organization that funds comparative effectiveness research to improve individual and population health.
Acetaminophen reduces sepsis patients’ organ injury risk
An NIH-supported clinical trial found that intravenous acetaminophen reduced sepsis patients’ risk of having organ injury or developing acute respiratory distress syndrome, a serious condition that allows fluid to leak into the lungs.
Sepsis is the body’s uncontrolled and extreme response to an infection. While the trial did not improve mortality rates in all patients with sepsis regardless of severity, the researchers found that acetaminophen gave the greatest benefit to the patients most at risk for organ damage. With the therapy, those patients needed less assisted ventilation and experienced a slight, though statistically insignificant, decrease in mortality. The study was published May 19 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
VUMC Nursing’s Code Academy
VUMC Nursing adopted a week of Code Academy hosted by the Boys & Girls Clubs of Middle Tennessee. The collaboration gave young coders the chance to solve real-life challenges in the nursing industry.
VUMC Nursing crafted a comprehensive program that addresses four significant nursing issues: stress and well-being, how to help patients comply with treatment for high blood pressure, inclusive hiring and retention strategies, and how to stay on task amid competing demands.
A memorable Labor Day
It was truly a Labor Day weekend to remember at VUMC, when transplant teams performed 10 kidney transplants in two days — and that was before even getting to Labor Day.
Kidney transplant teams, many members who had to be called in, performed five transplants on Saturday, Aug. 31, and another five transplants on Sunday, Sept. 1.
By Labor Day, 10 people had new kidneys and were in rooms on the transplant floor, the sixth floor of Medical Center East, in addition to transplant patients who had received other organs.
Preventing tick-borne illnesses
Scott Smith, MD, PhD, associate professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, was awarded a five-year, $3.5 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, to study the human immune response to tick bites and its role in preventing tick-borne illnesses.
The research aims to shed light on the phenomenon of acquired tick resistance and its implications for diseases like alpha-gal syndrome, an acquired meat allergy associated with past exposure to certain tick bites.
Coronary artery disease, depression linked
Coronary artery disease and major depression may be genetically linked via inflammatory pathways to an increased risk for cardiomyopathy, a degenerative heart muscle disease, researchers at VUMC and Massachusetts General Hospital found.
Their report, published in the journal Nature Mental Health, suggested that drugs prescribed for coronary artery disease and depression, when used in combination, potentially may reduce inflammation and prevent the development of cardiomyopathy.
Supercomputing redesign of a COVID monoclonal antibody
One of the monoclonal antibodies in the therapeutic Evusheld has been computationally redesigned to restore its action against Omicron variants of the virus that causes COVID-19.
The computational redesign approach, combined with experimental validation, could be used to rapidly address viral variants that are no longer blocked by antibody treatments, a multi-institutional team of researchers reported May 8 in the journal Nature.
Transplant team’s lengthy journey
An organ recovery team from VUMC flew to Alaska to recover a donor heart and returned to transplant it into a patient. The 5,704 nautical-mile trip was the farthest VUMC has traveled for an organ.
All told, the organ was preserved for 10 hours and 22 minutes before the transplant took place, a period known as ischemic time. Typical ischemic times for transplants are four to six hours.
This remarkable journey illustrated how new technologies make it possible to preserve organs longer, allowing Vanderbilt to look farther for a desperately needed match for people waiting on its organ transplant list.
Low white blood cell levels impact clinical care: study
People whose genetic makeup predisposes them to having low white blood cell levels experience changes in clinical care, a study found. They are more likely to receive a diagnosis of leukopenia (low white blood cell count), undergo a bone marrow biopsy, and have medications discontinued, according to the study published in the journal Nature Communications.
White blood cell (WBC) count is a routinely measured biomarker that guides clinical care. Levels that are too low or too high — based on a reference range determined in a healthy population — may indicate the presence of disease and prompt further diagnostic testing. But genetic variation can affect WBC count, so that in some people a WBC count outside the reference range does not indicate disease or increased risk of infection.
Stroke treatment award
Vanderbilt Wilson County Hospital received the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines — Stroke Silver quality achievement award for its commitment to ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines, ultimately leading to more lives saved and reduced disability.
Program prepares high school students for nursing careers
To address a national nursing shortage intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, VUMC began looking to recruit the next generation of nurses earlier than ever — in high school.
VUMC is collaborating with Nurses Middle College Nashville, a proposed public charter school, which is seeking approval from the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission to prepare high school students for careers in nursing.
Obesity and cancer risk
Immune system cells called macrophages play an unexpected role in the complicated connection between obesity and cancer, a Vanderbilt University Medical Center-led research team discovered.
Obesity increases the frequency of macrophages in tumors and induces their expression of the immune checkpoint protein PD-1 — a target of cancer immunotherapies. The findings, published in the journal Nature, provided a mechanistic explanation for how obesity can contribute to both increased cancer risk and enhanced responses to immunotherapy. The study also suggested strategies for improving immunotherapy and for identifying patients who will respond best to such treatments.
Blood test can predict cardiorespiratory fitness
A simple blood test known as a proteomic profile can predict a patient’s cardiorespiratory fitness, and those with the most fitness can reduce their risk of mortality by 50%, a Vanderbilt-led study recently found.
The research was the result of a large, transnational team of investigators, led by first author Andrew Perry, MD, instructor in Medicine, Eric Farber-Eger, principal app developer, Quinn Wells, MD, PharmD, associate professor of Medicine, and Ravi Shah, MD, professor of Medicine. The research was published in the journal Nature Medicine.
Brentwood property leased
To help meet the needs of its growing health system, VUMC leased the 43-acre property and building located at 402 Franklin Road in Brentwood, Tennessee. The 347,500-square-foot building is one of Brentwood’s largest and most recognizable. Current zoning allows for the property to be used for medical office space. Plans for the building and its adjacent property are under development.
MICU excellence award
The Vanderbilt University Hospital medical intensive care unit (MICU) was awarded a Gold Level Beacon Award for Excellence by the American Association of Critical Care Nurses.
This award was created by the AACN in 2003 to acknowledge and recognize specific units within a hospital system where direct care nurses have the greatest impact on patient outcomes. For patients, a unit with this designation demonstrates outstanding care. For nurses, it signifies a positive, supportive working environment with exceptional collaboration, high morale and low turnover.
Vanderbilt Rehabilitation Therapy relocates
Vanderbilt Rehabilitation Therapy relocated its Nashville adult outpatient orthopaedic clinic from Vanderbilt’s main campus to a new location at Vanderbilt Health One Hundred Oaks. The clinic is at Suite 31 at 719 Thompson Lane, beside the Ross store. It is on the ground floor, apart from the other Vanderbilt Health clinics at One Hundred Oaks.
The 4,165-square-foot clinic has its own entrance, lobby and convenient adjacent parking. The clinic provides services for Orthopaedic Physical Therapy, Pelvic Foor Rehab, and Hand Therapy for the adult population.
BlueCross, VUMC reach new agreement
BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, Tennessee’s largest health benefit plan company, and VUMC, Tennessee’s major quaternary health care provider, announced a new long-term network agreement.
BlueCross members with employer-based or individual coverage in both Network P and S continue to enjoy access to care at all Vanderbilt Health hospitals and clinics, and through all Vanderbilt physicians.
