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Ben Ho Park, MD, PhD, has been named co-leader of the Breast Cancer Research Program, director of Precision Oncology and associate director for Translational Research at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. He will assume his new post Sept. 1.

Kimryn Rathmell, MD, PhD, Cornelius Abernathy Craig Professor of Medicine and director of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC), has received a grant to research the role of immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment for kidney cancer.

Vanderbilt researchers have developed a new process that can rapidly and inexpensively identify personalized cancer drugs derived from nature.

The annual Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center Scientific Retreat will be held Thursday, May 3, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Vanderbilt Student Life Center. The potential link between the body’s microbiome and cancer is the topic of this year’s event.

Vito Quaranta, MD, and colleagues have found that treated melanoma cells enter a previously unrecognized “idling” state. These idling cells may be primed to acquire resistance mutations and may constitute the bulk of residual disease.

Human tumors appear to have a broken circadian clock, researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center report in the journal PeerJ.

Many types of cancer cells escape the body’s effort to kill them by overexpressing MCL-1, a protein important for blocking apoptosis, or programmed cell death. A recent study by Vivian Gama, PhD and colleagues indicates that MCL-1 also helps maintain the identity and ability of stem cells to differentiate, or give rise to other kinds of cells. 

Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators have identified a growing number of serious and sometimes fatal cases of heart problems among cancer patients treated with some forms of immunotherapy.

A new study by Dai Chung, MD, and colleagues reports that a protein, called SIRT6, plays an important role in the growth of neuroblastoma and suggests that SIRT6 may be a target for new therapeutics for the disease.

Targeting specific molecules in breast tumors, called methylating agents, can turn up the immune response, potentially making tumors responsive to immunotherapy, suggests a new study published in Nature Communications.