One year into her job as chair of Radiation Oncology, Lisa Kachnic, M.D., is leading Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center into a new era for a century-old therapy. Radiotherapy continues to be at the forefront of cancer research as doctors devise better ways to target tumors and understand how radiation interacts with some of the new immunotherapies. […]
El Camino de Santiago is a collection of routes throughout Europe that pilgrims have been walking for centuries. All the trails lead to the 800-year-old cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, which holds the remains of the apostle, Saint James. In 2012, I completed the first 200 miles of El Camino de Santiago’s 500-mile French […]
VUMC study: current cancer drug discovery method flawed The primary method used to test compounds for anti-cancer activity in cells is flawed, Vito Quaranta, M.D., and colleagues reported May 2 in Nature Methods. The scientists developed a new metric to evaluate a compound’s effect on cell proliferation. The old system counted how many cancer cells […]
Hiebert appointed to national cancer board Scott Hiebert, Ph.D., professor of Biochemistry and associate professor of Medicine, has been appointed to the National Cancer Advisory Board (NCAB). The NCAB consists of 18 members appointed by the President to advise the director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), a division of the National Institutes of Health […]
A new era in cancer research and treatment is dawning. Decades of hard work, scientific investment and diligent commitment led to the development of the first targeted therapies and immunotherapies 20 years ago, but only a few of these therapies had become widely available—until recently. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved several immunotherapies in […]
The collaborative culture among scientists and clinicians at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center proved to be a perfect fit for the Edward P. Evans Foundation, a major funder of research on myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). Through investments totaling nearly $3 million, the foundation has supported VICC faculty members’ contributions to research on the mechanistic underpinnings of the disease, […]
Checkpoint Inhibitors remove negative regulators (“brakes”) on T cells, allowing T cells to attack the tumor. Tumor vaccines expose the immune system to cancer antigens to produce an immune response. T cell therapies entail removing T cells from the body then engineering them to recognize cancer cells. – Source Douglas B. Johnson, M.D.
My husband looked at me and said, “I need you to teach me how to fix her hair.” It was December of 2010, and we were sitting in an oncology office after hearing the news that I had stage IV melanoma. Cancer. Not just a little bit of cancer, but a lot. No one had […]
A possible targeted therapy emerges for triple-negative breast cancer A targeted therapy for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), the most aggressive form of breast cancer, has shown potential promise in a recently published study. TNBC is the only type of breast cancer for which there are no currently approved targeted therapies. The new study led by […]
Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) has invested in a new TrueBeam linear accelerator that better targets tumors and minimizes radiation doses to healthy tissues. Lisa Kachnic, M.D., professor and chair of Radiation Oncology, said the device offers new cutting-edge treatment possibilities and will be unmatched in terms of accuracy for radiation delivery. “With less than […]
