For more than a dozen years Buz Harrison, a Nashville-based media producer, has been plagued by gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).

Leora Horn, M.D., M.Sc., associate professor of Medicine and clinical director of the Thoracic Oncology Program at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC), has been selected to lead a clinical research trial of combination therapy using two targeted drugs for the treatment of a specific form of lung cancer.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) is the first in the state to enroll patients in a clinical trial testing the effectiveness of the newest implantable device used to reduce stroke risk in patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common form of arrhythmia.

In 2011, doctors at the Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute performed the state’s first transcatheter valve-replacement (TAVR) procedure for high-risk patients suffering from aortic stenosis, the most common valvular heart disease in the United States.

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) is leading a Phase 3 global trial of a cancer therapy that was initially tested and validated in a VICC research laboratory. One of the first patients treated with the therapy came to VICC after a bump on the head led to an unexpected cancer diagnosis.

Many clinical trials are stopped prematurely because they fail to recruit enough study participants. Vanderbilt University Medical Center has received a five-year, $14 million grant from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the National Institutes of Health to address this.

This month an international HIV prevention trial was launched that is testing the infection-preventing prowess of a monoclonal antibody called VRCO1.