Cancer

Karen Winkfield, MD, PhD, Ingram Professor of Cancer Research, has been named associate director for Community Outreach and Engagement at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.

Jennifer Pietenpol, PhD, will be recognized at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) with one of its highest honors.

Ongoing research by Eunyoung Choi, PhD, into how cells transform into abnormal versions of themselves that are the precursors to stomach cancer has received support from the American Association for Cancer Research.

While immune checkpoint inhibitors that target the PD-1 molecule on T-cells have proven to be effective with many cancers, these immunotherapies have not worked for acute myeloid leukemia (AML), but new research has identified a “cousin” molecule as a potential therapeutic target for AML. 

The Food and Drug Administration first granted marketing approval for the DigniCap system for patients with breast cancer in 2015, then in 2017 the FDA expanded the authorization, making it the first cooling cap cleared for use in cancer patients with solid tumors, such as breast cancer, ovarian cancer and colorectal cancer.

The results from a research partnership between GE HealthCare and Vanderbilt University Medical Center utilizing artificial intelligence to enable safer and more precise cancer immunotherapies show that the models they developed predict patient responses with 70% to 80% accuracy.

Vanderbilt researchers are investigating whether sonograms of fallopian tubes can be effective for the early detection of ovarian cancer, and their ongoing study shows promise.