Vanderbilt investigators have developed a new analytical tool to identify, quantify and analyze small RNAs.

Bile acids — gut compounds that aid in the digestion of dietary fats — reduce the desire for cocaine, according to a new study by researchers at Vanderbilt and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Activation of the signaling protein YAP may be a target for treating acute kidney injury, which affects up to 20 percent of hospitalized patients.

Griffin Rodgers, MD, director of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), was a special guest during the 10th annual NIDDK Medical Student Research Symposium held earlier this month on the Vanderbilt University campus.

A protein involved in binding cells together helps maintain the integrity of the intestinal mucosa and plays a protective role in ulcerative colitis.

Loss of a gene that is part of the TGF-beta signaling pathway increased inflammation in the colon and was observed in half of human colitis-associated cancers.

The first demonstration of bacterial DNA in mammalian fetal intestinal tissue suggests that the mother’s microbiome moves into the fetal intestine.