Vanderbilt University has received a five-year, $2.5-million Physician Scientist Institutional Award from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund to help bolster the dwindling number of active physician-scientists in the United States.

Richard Peek, MD, director of the Vanderbilt Digestive Disease Research Center (VDDRC) and chief of the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, has been appointed to serve on the advisory council of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK).

Impaired swallowing — dysphagia — affects 3 percent of hospital inpatients, who have longer hospital stays and are more likely to require post-acute care services.

Members of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) community and others whose lives and careers have been influenced by legendary cancer investigator, educator and administrator Harold (Hal) Moses, M.D., have endowed the Linda and Harold L. Moses, M.D. Career Development Fund.

Vanderbilt investigators have discovered a novel non-genetic cause of resistance to the targeted anti-cancer therapy cetuximab. Their findings, reported this week in Nature Medicine, suggest a strategy for overcoming this resistance.

Vanderbilt’s Robert Coffey Jr., M.D., has received an Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) — more than $6.6 million over seven years — to support studies aimed at advancing the diagnosis and treatment of colorectal cancer (CRC), a leading cancer killer.

Under the microscope, they sparkle like emeralds, these molecules that may hold a key to understanding — and stopping — cancerous growth.