News: Women’s Cancers

Early detection of lymphedema, which occurs in 20% of patients following breast cancer treatment, may improve therapeutic options for patients.

Providing access to a culturally appropriate community health worker during breast cancer screenings may impact elements of patient care and satisfaction among Hispanic/Latina women.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is participating in an international study to determine the effectiveness of a new therapeutic vaccine for treating women with precancerous changes on the cervix.

Digna R. Velez Edwards, PhD, has been named director of Women’s Health Research, succeeding longtime director and founder, Katherine Hartmann, MD, PhD, associate dean of Clinical and Translational Scientist Development and professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

A cancer research consortium headed by investigators at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) and two other institutions, today received $12 million in federal funding to help determine why African-American women die at a higher rate and have more aggressive breast cancer than white women.  The grant, which was awarded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part […]

Ronald David Alvarez, M.D., Ellen Gregg Shook Culverhouse Chair in the Division of Gynecologic Oncology and vice chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has been named chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. His appointment is effective Sept. 1. Alvarez […]

Contact: Dagny Stuart, (615) 936-7245 Dagny.stuart@vanderbilt.edu In response to low national vaccination rates for the human papillomavirus (HPV), Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) has joined 68 of the nation’s other NCI-designated cancer centers in urging increased HPV vaccination for the prevention of cancer. Experts at VICC, in collaboration with colleagues at the other cancer centers, recognize […]

Two Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) investigators — Jennifer Pietenpol, Ph.D., B.F. Byrd Jr. Professor of Oncology and director of VICC, and Valerie Jansen, M.D., Ph.D., medical oncology fellow — have received new cancer research grants awarded by Susan G. Komen, the world’s largest nonprofit funder of breast cancer research. The 2015 grants will provide nearly […]

Dineo Khabele, M.D., associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Cancer Biology, has been named to the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (OCRF). Khabele joins Celeste Leigh Pearce, Ph.D., MPH, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan, and Daniel Powell Jr., Ph.D., research associate professor of […]

Ovarian cancer is often diagnosed at an advanced stage and frequently develops resistance to platinum chemotherapy. Identifying new drug combinations to overcome platinum resistance is a critical clinical challenge. They report in the Journal of Ovarian Research that combined thymoquinone and cisplatin had synergistic anti-tumor effects in cultured cells. The drug combination reduced tumor burden and […]