A report by researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center has shattered conventional wisdom about how cells, including cancer cells, shed DNA into the bloodstream: they don’t do it by packaging the genetic material in tiny vesicles called exosomes.

Speakers at the inaugural SCRIPS Spring Symposium (Supporting Careers in Research for Interventional Physicians and Surgeons) last week were, from left, Kelle Moley, MD, senior vice president and chief scientific officer of the March of Dimes; 2018 SCRIPS Scholars Yash Choksi, MD, and Akshitkumar Mistry, MD; and Anil Rustgi, MD.

A medicine currently being tested as a chemoprevention agent for multiple types of cancer has more than one trick in its bag when it comes to preventing stomach cancer, Vanderbilt researchers have discovered.

The protein kinase STK17A plays a novel role in epithelial cells and its loss may contribute to colorectal cancer invasion and metastasis, Vanderbilt researchers report.

“I think my favorite part of my job is trying to make this as good of an experience for the patient as possible."

A trans-institutional team of researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt University has received an $11 million Cancer Moonshot grant to build a single-cell resolution atlas to map out the routes that benign colonic polyps take to progress to colorectal cancer, the third most common cancer among both men and women in the United States.

A protein involved in binding cells together helps maintain the integrity of the intestinal mucosa and plays a protective role in ulcerative colitis.