News: Departments

The survivors celebration, a free event co-sponsored by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, is for anyone whose life has been touched by cancer. The turnout for the 2019 event was at capacity with survivors, families, caregivers and volunteers. Resource tables staffed by volunteers provided information on survivorship, community support […]

New prostate cancer treatment concept Prostate cancer, the second leading cause of cancer-related death for men in the United States, is poorly responsive to immunotherapy. Recent clinical trials have hinted that combining immunotherapy and radiation therapy may be a powerful treatment approach for castration-resistant prostate cancer. Austin Kirschner, MD, PhD, and colleagues combined radiotherapy with […]

The team at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center is working with many different health care systems to improve chances of survival for people residing in a region of the country with the highest cancer mortality. Kentucky has the highest rate of cancer deaths in the United States, followed by Mississippi, West Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Alabama. […]

Cathy Eng, MD, the David H. Johnson Professor of Surgical and Medical Oncology, co-director of Gastrointestinal Oncology and co-leader of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Research Program, is one of the nation’s top colorectal cancer experts. Q: How prevalent and deadly is colorectal cancer? A: In the U.S. alone, it is estimated that over 145,000 individuals will […]

Living at the epicenter of the region with the nation’s highest lung cancer mortality rates, Sallie Sawyer of Gladeville, Tennessee, smoked for 50 years and has evaded death twice. She participated in a clinical trial for the early detection of lung cancer, which led to her first tumor being discovered when it was just a […]

SPORE may have been just an acronym, not a nod to the biological definition, when the National Cancer Institute (NCI) launched its Specialized Programs of Research Excellence in 1992. But the SPOREs are living up to their catchy name. They are behaving like biological spores: casting their funding “seeds” far and wide to germinate entirely […]

Betsy Williams has firsthand advice for parents on the fence about whether their adolescent children should be vaccinated for the common human papilloma virus (HPV), which can lead to six types of cancer. Don’t hesitate. Do it. Williams, 62, was diagnosed with an HPV-linked head and neck cancer in January 2018. After surgery to remove […]

Blessings come in all shapes and sizes. Lately, I have been seeing them all around me. I guess I first started really noticing them when one of my best friends died from respiratory issues. His friendship was such a blessing, and because of that, I decided to quit smoking after 43 years. I got what […]

Lara Ramsey wanted a second opinion about breast cancer treatment options, so she steeled herself for a two-hour drive from the forested hills of Dawson Springs, Kentucky, to the traffic mazes around Nashville. At Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC), she got answers to her questions, decided on a treatment plan and learned she could cut her […]

Ishmeal Boles was so sick with cancer he was out of his mind. His lung cancer, which had gone undiagnosed, had spread to his liver, spine and brain when he was transferred from a community hospital to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “For three weeks, he didn’t know he was in this world; he didn’t know […]