News: Featured Story

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 phrase “lightning never strikes twice” means little to Thomas Brewer of Charlotte, Tennessee, because for him, it did — once in 2000 and again in 2017. The “lightning” in Brewer’s case was cancer — first, esophageal; then, colon. For some, developing a secondary cancer — not a spread or recurrence of a first […]

  When James Goldenring, MD, PhD, talks about the landscape of the stomach, he sounds a bit like a real estate agent: this is a desirable neighborhood, this one is a bit sketchy, and by all means, steer clear of this area. In the case of the stomach, these “neighborhoods” are collections of different types […]

  Claudia Barajas knows health disparities in the Hispanic/Latino and African-American communities will not be resolved simply by having patients come to Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC). To address those disparities, she must go to them. Barajas is a community health educator who leads the Healthy Communities Program, offering culturally appropriate cancer prevention education and information […]

  Instead of undergoing more than a month of radiation therapy for prostate cancer, Phillip Perry finished his treatments in just five days. “The process was quick and I was able to carry on with my normal activities each day,” said Perry, a 53-year-old flight attendant from Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, who enjoys travel photography. He […]