During a meeting in Nashville last week, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) called on academic medical centers to make the case for continued, strong federal investment in biomedical research.

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center’s gastrointestinal Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) has been awarded its third round of funding by the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

The first Chancellor’s Lecture of the academic year, entitled “Genomes, Hype and a Realistic Pathway to Personalized Medicine,” will be given Wednesday, Sept. 12, by Dan Roden, M.D., assistant vice chancellor for Personalized Medicine at Vanderbilt University.

This month BioVU logged in its 150,000th unique genetic sample. It is now the world’s largest collection of human DNA linked to searchable, electronic health information.

A rare, inherited mutation confers an eightfold increased risk of prostate cancer, a recent study shows.

Females may be at higher risk of potentially fatal heart condition due to gender differences in a protein involved in the heart’s electrical activity.

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center researchers have identified how one of the genes most commonly mutated in lung cancer may promote such tumors.