Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) have mapped the conformational changes that occur in a protein “notorious” for pumping chemotherapeutic drugs out of cancer cells and blocking medications from reaching the central nervous system.

New studies of a membrane transporter could explain antibiotic resistance – and lead to novel ways to combat it.

Vanderbilt investigators are exploring the shape changes in a multidrug transporter to understand the mechanisms of antibacterial resistance.

Vanderbilt investigators demonstrate that a certain eye lens protein is evolutionarily conserved between zebrafish and rat, suggesting that zebrafish can be used as a model system to understand eye lens disorders such as cataracts.

New insights to the workings of a protein that moves neurotransmitters across the nerve cell membrane could aid the design of more effective antidepressants.

Reporting last week in the journal Cell, researchers from Oregon Health and Science University, Harvard Medical School and Vanderbilt University describe the first “four-dimensional” picture of a brain receptor that plays a key role in learning and memory.

New views of how transporters move molecules across cell membranes are key to understanding how these proteins impact tumor cell drug resistance and inherited diseases such as cystic fibrosis.