Epithelial Biology Center

September 8, 2025

SPORE grant funds $12 million for colorectal cancer research

SPORE grants are highly sought after because they show that a cancer center demonstrates scientific excellence, promotes collaboration, maintains robust research programs and merits substantial funding.

By Tom Wilemon
Ken Lau, PhD, left, and Bob Coffey, MD, have made several important discoveries about colorectal cancer that are aiding the search for new, more effective therapies. (photo by Erin O. Smith)
December 11, 2023

Colorectal cancer ‘cartography’ reveals an avenue to improved immunotherapy

Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers have discovered why most colorectal tumors escape detection and destruction by the body’s immune system.

By Bill Snyder
July 12, 2022

Probing the tumor microenvironment

Vanderbilt researchers used single-cell sequencing, imaging, and computational approaches to characterize the colonic tumor microenvironment, providing important insights to the components that play roles in colorectal tumor pathogenesis.

By Leigh MacMillan
Stomach
May 19, 2022

Molecular ‘switch’ may illuminate stomach disorders

An international team that included researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center has discovered a molecular switch that induces rapid proliferation of zymogen granule-secreting chief cells in the stomach to regenerate damaged tissue.

By Bill Snyder
September 21, 2021

The role of polarity in early cancer

Mutations in the protein epiregulin, an EGF receptor ligand, affect larger epithelial cell reorganization and may contribute to early cancer development, Vanderbilt researchers discovered.

By VUMC News and Communications
Paige Vega has been selected as the 2021 Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholar.
August 11, 2021

Vega selected as 2021 Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholar

Paige Vega, a PhD student in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University, has been selected as the 2021 Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholar.

By Bill Snyder
June 18, 2020

Studying cells in reduced dimensions

Vanderbilt cell biologists have developed an unbiased, quantitative framework for evaluating single-cell data.
By Bill Snyder
September 27, 2018

Cancer Moonshot award to help map tumor progression

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.
By Tom Wilemon
October 17, 2017

Researchers find novel mechanism of resistance to anti-cancer drugs

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.
By Leigh MacMillan
June 8, 2017

Coffey lands major NCI award to support colorectal cancer research

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.
By Bill Snyder
May 18, 2017

Glowing receptors help find and track cancerous growth

Under the microscope, they sparkle like emeralds, these molecules that may hold a key to understanding — and stopping — cancerous growth.
By Bill Snyder
May 4, 2017

Study seeks to reverse precancerous stomach lesions

Vanderbilt University Medical Center cancer researcher James Goldenring, M.D., Ph.D., has received a two-year, $200,000 grant from the DeGregorio Family Foundation in Pleasantville, New York, to begin clinical trials of a potential approach for reversing precancerous stomach lesions.
By Bill Snyder
March 23, 2017

Study takes 3-D perspective on colorectal cancer

Despite dramatic recent advances in treatment, colorectal cancer killed more than 49,000 Americans last year, according to the National Cancer Institute, making it the second most lethal malignancy after cancers of the lung and bronchus.
By Bill Snyder
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