Ian Macara, Ph.D., left, chair of the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, and Lawrence Marnett, Ph.D., right, dean of Basic Sciences in the School of Medicine, visited with Rockefeller University professor David Allis, Ph.D., last week prior to Allis’ Flexner Discovery Lecture on epigenetics.

Vanderbilt investigators have identified an unexpected link between cell survival and the polarized delivery of proteins to the surface of mammary epithelial cells.

The discoveries that can change the course of human health forever often begin in the tiniest places: in molecules and cells, at the most fundamental intersection of physics, chemistry and biology. Understanding how these cellular and molecular processes work is the focus of basic biomedical research at Vanderbilt.

A new method developed at Vanderbilt may help “inventory” all tumor-promoting genes.

Vanderbilt’s Ian Macara, Ph.D., has won an Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) — nearly $6.6 million over seven years — to support the “unusual potential” of his research, which seeks to understand and predict cancer cell “behavior.”

Ian Macara, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, recently returned from Scotland, where he received this year’s Colin Thomson Memorial Medal for his contributions to cancer research.

A protein essential for growth of normal breast tissue also may play a role in breast cancer, Vanderbilt University researchers have found.