News: Featured Story

The challenge to accomplish “practice-changing, paradigm-shifting, policy-creating” research is one that scientists and clinicians at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center have often heard from Jennifer Pietenpol, PhD. Those words are like a mantra for Pietenpol, Executive Vice President for Research, chief scientific and strategy officer for Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and holder of the Brock Family […]

At the age of 13, Jason Schwartz made a life-changing decision. Amid cancer treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Schwartz was handed an incredible gift that would fuel his life’s work.  “I developed a great relationship with my tutor,” recalled Schwartz. “Dennis was his name. I remember that I didn’t always feel so great, and schoolwork […]

A collaboration between Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation and Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center is providing access to clinical research for people in the Deep South and expanding the research missions for both institutions.  Memphis-based Baptist has a network of 22 hospitals and 25 cancer centers with 13 of those oncology clinics in smaller cities of Mississippi, […]

Larry Marnett, PhD, points at an iconic photograph of the American thoroughbred racehorse Secretariat winning the Belmont Stakes and clinching the Triple Crown in 1973. Secretariat, far ahead of the small blurry group of horses behind him, still holds the speed record and largest margin of victory for the track. “Secretariat won by 31 lengths. […]

On June 26, 2020, Maheen Porter, then age 30, called her husband, Austin, into the bedroom of their Nashville-area home to join a phone call from a nurse practitioner at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. Porter sat down on the floor for the call, which concerned results of her recent breast mass biopsy. The nurse informed the […]

When the first cancer patients in Tennessee underwent chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy in 2015, they had to be hospitalized for two months and closely monitored for serious reactions. Those clinical trials by oncologists at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and other academic centers nationwide led to the approval of the powerful new immunotherapy for patients […]

G. Lee Bryant Jr., MD, remembers when he first noticed something odd about his right thumb. In December 2016, a streak of redness appeared under his thumbnail, and splitting at the nail’s end never seemed to resolve. That concern – and the path it put him on – ultimately led Bryant to create a blog […]

Damaris Olagundoye, MD, grew up knowing that her maternal grandmother was a breast cancer survivor. She would listen as her mother talked with cousins who had also been diagnosed with the disease, but her family didn’t learn until decades later that they carried a mutation in the BRCA2 gene. Her mother’s heritage was Afro Panamanian, […]

Twenty years ago, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) established the nation’s first Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) to focus exclusively on colorectal cancer, the second leading cancer killer after lung cancer. Directed by Robert J. Coffey, MD, and continuously funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) since 2002, the gastrointestinal (GI) SPORE has fostered a […]

Claudia Barajas recently put on headphones at El Jefe, a Nashville-based Hispanic radio station, to moderate an information-packed discussion about lung cancer prevention and the importance of screenings for individuals at higher risk of developing lung cancer.  Her Spanish-speaking guest was Rafael Paez, MD, a clinical fellow in the Department of Medicine, Division of Allergy, […]