A high-fat diet disrupts the biology of the gut’s inner lining and its microbial communities — and promotes the production of a metabolite that may contribute to heart disease, according to a study published Aug. 13 in the journal Science.

A biomarker that has proven to be a predictor for response to immunotherapies in melanoma patients also has clinical relevance for breast cancer patients, according to a new study published in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Paige Vega, a PhD student in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University, has been selected as the 2021 Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholar.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have found that people recovering from COVID-19 and those vaccinated against the causative virus, SARS-CoV-2, produce identical clones, or groups, of antibody-producing white blood cells.

Helicobacter pylori, a stomach-dwelling bacterium, is a strong risk factor for gastric cancer, peptic ulcers and other debilitating gastrointestinal disorders. Yet efforts to eradicate it using a combination of antibiotics and proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), which suppress gastric acid production, often fail.

It is now possible to “edit” the human germline — the genetic cargo carried in sperm and eggs and which is passed to the next generation — in a way that snips out the mutations which cause inherited disease.

Vanderbilt biochemists have discovered what the DNA damage response protein RADX does — and how it does it.