Reporter

Christy Horner, director of VUMC’s Driver Evaluation and Rehabilitation Program, instructs patient Brittany Rogers during Rogers’ biweekly driver training session.
April 18, 2019

Driver training opens doors for teens with disabilities

Learning to drive can be scary for teens and parents. But for the families of teens with developmental and physical disabilities, learning whether they have the potential to drive can be just as unnerving.

By Kelsey Herbers
Researchers who helped find high-risk genes for schizophrenia included, from left, Quan Wang, PhD, Bingshan Li, PhD, Nancy Cox, PhD, Rui Chen, PhD, Xue Zhong, PhD, Qiang Wei, PhD, and James Sutcliffe, PhD.
April 18, 2019

Researchers find high-risk genes for schizophrenia

Using a unique computational framework they developed, a team of scientist cyber-sleuths in the Vanderbilt University Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics and the Vanderbilt Genetics Institute (VGI) has identified 104 high-risk genes for schizophrenia.

By Bill Snyder
From left, Wei Zheng, MD, PhD, Jae Jeong Yang, PhD, Danxia Yu, PhD, and colleagues are studying smoking patterns and associated deaths in Asian countries.
April 18, 2019

Asian nations in early tobacco epidemic: study

Asian countries are in the early stages of a tobacco smoking epidemic with habits mirroring those of the United States from past decades, setting the stage for a spike in future deaths from smoking-related diseases.

By Tom Wilemon
The Vanderbilt team studying histoplasmosis includes (front row, from left, Heidi Chen, PhD, Melinda Aldrich, PhD, MPH, (back row, from left) Stephen Deppen, PhD, Eric Grogan, MD, MPH, and Jeffrey Blume, PhD.
April 18, 2019

Team explores fungal infection quandary in lung cancer screenings

Serving a region that lies within the tobacco belt, clinicians at Vanderbilt Health face challenges distinguishing lung cancer from histoplasmosis, a fungal infection that creates cancer-mimicking lesions in the lungs.

By Tom Wilemon
April 15, 2019

Harvard’s Christine Seidman to receive 2019 Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science

Christine Seidman, MD, whose lab has identified the genetic causes of several human heart diseases including cardiomyopathy (potentially fatal enlargement of the heart) is the recipient of the 2019 Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science, officials at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) announced today.

By Bill Snyder
April 11, 2019

Pathways of radiosensitization

Austin Kirschner and colleagues demonstrate how a hormone therapy for prostate cancer improves radiation’s tumor-killing power.

By Leigh MacMillan
April 11, 2019

The arrestin-GPCR connection

Understanding details of how arrestins deactivate signaling by G-protein coupled receptors is key to the design of new therapeutics aimed at these cellular "inboxes" that are targeted by up to half of all pharmaceuticals.
By Sanjay Mishra
April 11, 2019

Keeping bone in its place

Jonathan Schoenecker and colleagues have discovered a new mechanism for the formation of bone in soft tissues — a complication of severe injuries that causes pain and limits mobility.
By Anivarya Kumar
April 11, 2019

Discovery aids search for cancer biomarkers

A report by researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center has shattered conventional wisdom about how cells, including cancer cells, shed DNA into the bloodstream: they don’t do it by packaging the genetic material in tiny vesicles called exosomes.
By Bill Snyder
April 11, 2019

Family’s journey an inspiration for organ donation awareness

Heroes come in all sizes, and Mikayla Honeycutt was a small but mighty one. Born with a congenital brain condition called Dandy-Walker Syndrome, she had too much fluid in her brain.
By Matt Batcheldor
April 11, 2019

How bugs overcome host defenses

Vanderbilt researchers led by Eric Skaar are probing the mechanisms bacteria use when faced with nutrient starvation — a host defense strategy called “nutritional immunity.”
By Leigh MacMillan
April 11, 2019

VUMC-led team ‘sprints’ to develop Zika virus treatment

In January scientists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and colleagues in Boston, Seattle and St. Louis were given an audacious goal to develop — in 90 days — a protective antibody-based treatment that potentially will stop the spread of the Zika virus.
By Bill Snyder
April 11, 2019

VISE team seeks to develop new robot to ease prostatectomies

The Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering (VISE) team of Robert Webster III, PhD, and Duke Herrell, MD, have received a $2.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a new surgical robot for endoscopic transurethral prostatectomy.
By Michelle Bukowski