Cancer

For some people cancer, especially colon cancer, is a persistent and potentially deadly visitor affecting family members from one generation to the next. Individuals who have a parent, sibling or child diagnosed with colon cancer have double the risk of developing the disease.

A new method developed at Vanderbilt may help “inventory” all tumor-promoting genes.

A cancer research consortium headed by investigators at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and two other institutions have received $12 million in federal funding to help determine why African-American women die at a higher rate and have more aggressive breast cancer than white women.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today announced that it has selected Vanderbilt University Medical Center to participate in a care delivery model that supports and encourages higher quality, more coordinated cancer care. The Medicare arm of the Oncology Care Model includes more than 3,200 oncologists — about one-fifth of U.S. oncology specialists — and will involve approximately 155,000 Medicare beneficiaries nationwide.

Christine Lovly, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of Medicine and Cancer Biology, has been selected to testify before members of Congress about the importance of cancer research, including early training programs for individuals interested in science.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been designated a Lung Cancer Screening Center by the American College of Radiology.

The ability to test patients’ cancers for individual differences, mainly at the genetic level, and to make treatment decisions based on those differences is the hallmark of precision medicine, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) is among the leaders of this new approach to diagnosis and treatment.