Basic Sciences

The Vanderbilt University School of Medicine has established a new award to recognize and support outstanding graduate students who have distinguished themselves through the excellence, significance and scientific rigor of their work.

Using new computational approaches to understand the behavior of cells should aid efforts to predict how mutations affect cell function and how diseases respond to drug combinations.

Studies in fruit flies have shed light on how the basement membrane — a sheet-like scaffold that wraps around most animal tissues — is repaired after being damaged.

New findings about proteins involved in DNA repair are important for understanding why some cancers are more or less resistant to certain therapies.

New findings shed light on the formation of microtubule structures that support cellular processes ranging from cell division to intracellular transport.

New findings open opportunities to understand mechanisms of DNA repair for a toxic form of DNA damage.

Vanderbilt researchers used spectroscopy to understand how a drug transporter pumps drugs out of cells, findings that are important for developing novel anti-cancer and anti-bacterial drugs that can overcome drug resistance.