Around the Medical Center

Jonathan Metzl, M.D., Ph.D., was recently named director of research of the Safe Tennessee Project, a non-partisan, volunteer-based organization devoted to reducing gun violence in the state. Metzl is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and director of … Continued

It’s been about a decade since the promise of COX-2 inhibitors—drugs that relieve arthritis pain and inflammation without the gastrointestinal side effects of other painkillers—was tempered by the realization that they could cause heart problems in some patients. Now a … Continued

Vanderbilt University has received a contract from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for up to $28 million over four years to help more than 4,000 clinicians in the Southeast transform their clinical practices in ways that improve … Continued

Compound developed at VUMC may delay Huntington’s disease  A compound developed by researchers at Vanderbilt University can improve early symptoms and delay progression of Huntington’s disease in a mouse model of the neurodegenerative disorder. The findings, reported in the Proceedings of … Continued

Eleuseo Morales-Garcia awoke suddenly to his San Marcos, Guatemala, home shaking violently on July 7, 2014. It was 5 a.m. and the walls were crumbling around him, his wife, Audelia Marta-Ortiz, and their five children. The earthquake that hit their … Continued

Antibiotics with anticancer potential The type II topoisomerases—enzymes that manage tangles and supercoils in DNA—exist in all organisms and are important drug targets. Widely prescribed anticancer agents including etoposide and doxorubicin target human type II topoisomerases, and quinolone antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin target … Continued

Andrew Ekelem sits in a wheelchair at the bottom of the fifth-floor stairwell at Olin Hall, laptop balanced on his thighs, quick keystrokes making tiny adjustments for the exoskeleton that promises to change his life. If Ekelem is impatient with … Continued

AVanderbilt study, published in Circulation, associates heart function with the development of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Participants with decreased heart function, measured by cardiac index, were two to three times more likely to develop significant memory loss over the follow-up … Continued

Vanderbilt recently debuted a new minimally invasive surgical treatment for epilepsy, and for 25-year-old Cory Moquist, the procedure, which he underwent in February, is “opening a lot of doors.” The cutting-edge technique employs MRI-guided laser ablation to destroy the brain tissue … Continued