News: Featured Story

­ Ron Duncan kept Googling his cancer diagnosis and coming up with the same answer: death. Having just gotten the news from his primary care provider, he wanted to know what his options were with peritoneal carcinomatosis, a cancer that had originated in his appendix then spread throughout his abdominal cavity. His only inkling that […]

Medical oncologist and cancer geneticist Ben Ho Park, MD, PhD, has set his sights on a new era of breast cancer patient assessment, which, in turn, could usher in a new level of precision treatment. “I want to figure out whether liquid biopsy is as good as we think it is. Can we use it […]

Sharon Seibert is among the more than 5,000 patients who have received a stem cell transplant at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC), which has one of the best survival rates in the nation and is at the forefront of new cellular therapies. She considers herself blessed. As an African American, Seibert’s odds of matching with an […]

One hundred thousand. That’s the number of spots in a cell’s DNA that might be damaged every single day. Our DNA is under constant attack by the chemical products of normal cellular metabolism, ultraviolet radiation from the sun, chemicals in the environment, X-rays and other insults. One hundred thousand. That’s also the number of spots […]

Dylan Burnette, PhD, assistant professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt, uses a structured illumination microscope to capture cancer cells in motion. This advanced microscope shines different patterns of light on a sample to reveal images that are blurred by older microscope designs. The microscope he and other researchers use is housed at the […]

As a barrel racer, Bari Brooks is accustomed to dealing with a trio of obstacles. The rodeo sport entails staying astride a horse as it careens around three 50-gallon drums arranged in a cloverleaf pattern. After being diagnosed with breast cancer, she had to put the racing on hold and make it past three more […]

Patients with stage IV small cell lung cancer lived longer when given the immunotherapy atezolizumab with chemotherapy, setting the stage for what could become the first new treatment approved in decades for this particularly aggressive form of lung cancer. Results of the study published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that patients […]

Terry Burke was going out on a limb. He planned to hire 30-year-old Curt Thorne for a senior-level position at Cigna. “Son, I’m going to give you an opportunity of a lifetime, and if you make it, you’re going to make it big. And if you don’t, I’m going to fire your ass,” Burke told […]

Centennial High School teacher Stephen Huff vividly remembers the day he came very close to passing out behind the wheel. “It was the day after the final day of school in 2017,” Huff said. “I was on my way home from getting a chest CT scan when my phone rang. It was my doctor. I […]

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has entrusted Vanderbilt scientists to lead several major research initiatives with recently awarded grants. The largest of those awards is an $11 million Cancer Moonshot grant. A trans-institutional team of researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and Vanderbilt University will utilize those funds to build a single-cell resolution atlas […]