What do the lowly yeast and human stem cells have in common?

Susan Lindquist, Ph.D., recipient of the 2014 Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science, will deliver her Vanderbilt Prize Lecture on Thursday, Nov. 19.

Nearly half of all patients with malignant melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, have a mutation in the BRAF gene found in their tumors. Mutations in the BRAF gene turn on a cancer growth switch known as the MAP kinase pathway.

A team of Vanderbilt University Medical Center scientists are closer to understanding why COX-2 inhibitors — drugs that relieve arthritis pain and inflammation without the gastrointestinal side effects of other painkillers — cause heart problems in some patients. Now

Reduced-nicotine cigarettes were beneficial in reducing nicotine exposure and dependence, and also the number of cigarettes smoked per day, when compared with standard-nicotine cigarettes in a six-week study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

To most effectively use electronic health records for research, investigators should query multiple components of the record to identify patients with specific diseases.

Vanderbilt investigators have developed a framework for studying cellular responses that could be used to identify the agents driving a range of biological processes in health and disease.