Department of Cell and Developmental Biology

Microtubules — part of the cell's cytoskeleton — regulate the secretion of insulin, suggesting that they may be a new target for treating diabetes.

Megan Rasmussen, a PhD student in Cell and Developmental Biology, has been selected as the 2019 Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholar.

Scott Baldwin and colleagues have discovered early signaling events during heart development, findings that could guide cell replacement therapies for heart disease.

Young-Jae Nam and colleagues are discovering how to express specific factors in connective tissue cells to turn them into heart muscle cells.

Vanderbilt scientists led by Andrea Page-McCaw have discovered a new way to analyze repair of basement membranes — important structural and functional components of tissues.

Malignant rhabdoid tumor (MRT) is one of the most aggressive and lethal childhood cancers. Although rare — about 20 to 25 new cases are diagnosed annually in the United States — there is no standard effective treatment for the disease, which is driven by loss of an anti-cancer protein called SNF5. The chances are very small that a child will survive a year after MRT diagnosis.

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