Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust

Saunders receives diabetes research innovation award

Vanderbilt’s Diane Saunders, PhD, has been selected as a 2023 recipient of an Innovation Award by the Network of Pancreatic Donors with Diabetes.

Insulin in vials

Aging beta cells hasten Type 2 diabetes

Vanderbilt investigators have found that aging induces chronic cellular stress in pancreatic beta cells, which could contribute to the development of diabetes as we age.

Pancreatlas provides access to complex images of the human pancreas

Images of cells and tissues are a critical part of biomedical research as they show which molecules or proteins are present and where these molecules are located in the tissue. Using increasingly sophisticated microscopes and imaging approaches, scientists can now look at more than 40 different molecules at once, an approach known as multi-plex imaging, where in the past they could only look at three or four molecules at a time.

From left, Qi Liu, PhD, Lori Coburn, MD, Gregor Neuert, PhD, Keith Wilson, MD, Ken Lau, PhD, and Bennett Landman, PhD, are leading VUMC’s contribution to the “gut cell atlas” program funded by the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.

Grant spurs effort to map biology of Crohn’s disease

VUMC has been awarded a three-year, $3 million grant to map — in unprecedented detail — the biology of Crohn’s disease.