Nicholas Tierney GI Cancer Memorial Fund

Better adenoma detection

Fluorescent nanoparticles clearly identified colonic adenomas — precursors to colorectal cancer — in mice, and the formulation should translate to clinical use in humans.

A ‘supermere’ method for biomarker discovery

Vanderbilt researchers have developed a method for isolating extracellular vesicles and nanoparticles — a complex transport system involved in health and disease — which will improve biomarker discovery and the identification of therapeutic targets.

Probing the tumor microenvironment

Vanderbilt researchers used single-cell sequencing, imaging, and computational approaches to characterize the colonic tumor microenvironment, providing important insights to the components that play roles in colorectal tumor pathogenesis.