Reporter March 29 2019

Cancer’s SOS

Stephen Fesik and colleagues are advancing cancer drug discovery with the characterization of small molecules that modulate RAS, an important target for anti-cancer therapies.

Cardiac dysfunction in DMD

The protein MMP7 is elevated in blood from patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy who have cardiac dysfunction, suggesting that it may be a biomarker for heart disease severity.

Drug interaction causes hypotension

A muscle relaxing-drug and inhibitors of the metabolic enzyme CYP1A2 interact to cause severely low blood pressure and should not be co-prescribed, Vanderbilt investigators caution.

Unraveling endocytosis

New discoveries by Jason MacGurn and colleagues further understanding of the complex machinery that cells use take up substances from outside the cell.

Treatment resistance of mental disorders studied

With the aid of a four-year, $3.4 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) will apply new techniques to investigate treatment resistance of two devastating mental disorders — major depressive disorder, which befalls 15 percent of people at some point in their lives, and schizophrenia, which affects approximately 1 percent.

Hot chemotherapy surgery helps save patient’s leg

Tom Deweese can keep up with his grandchildren because of a highly specialized surgery using hot chemotherapy that saved his leg.

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