A new online tool enables cancer patients and researchers to track the latest developments in personalized cancer medicine and connect with clinical research trials.

The South is known for many things: hot, steamy summers, iced tea laced with sugar and friendly people with a tendency to welcome strangers. But beneath the veneer of Southern hospitality and gracious living lurks a silent killer: cancer. Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center researchers have their own name for the southern region of the United States: the "cancer belt."

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center has been selected as a Blue Distinction Center for Complex and Rare CancersSM by Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, in collaboration with BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee.

Cancer patients from the Southeastern United States who are treated with the drug cetuximab, known commercially as Erbitux, are far more likely to suffer severe allergic reactions than patients in other regions of the country.

Jennifer Pietenpol, Ph.D., Ingram Professor of Cancer Research and professor of Biochemistry, has been named director of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.

Women who receive silicone gel-filled breast implants do not have a higher risk of breast cancer or other cancers and do not experience lower survival rates after breast cancer diagnosis, according to a new report published in the November issue of Annals of Plastic Surgery. This is the first exhaustive review in almost a decade of the health effects of cosmetic breast implants.

Men with prostate cancer now may have access to a new, minimally invasive surgical procedure. Urologic surgeons at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center will be the first in Tennessee to test the new Ablatherm procedure, which uses high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) to destroy cancerous prostate tissue without any incision.