VUMC Year in Review 2011: Achievements, Milestones Abounded in Past Year

Study proves benefits of spina bifida surgery

Results of a landmark, seven-year NIH-funded trial, Management of Myelomeningocele Study (MOMS), demonstrate clear benefit for babies who undergo fetal surgery to treat spina bifida, the most common birth defect in the central nervous system.

Children’s Hospital expansion

Construction began in February on two expansion projects at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt, including a 30,000 square-foot-addition and added space for pediatric clinics.

VICC launches online genetic research tool

In March, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center launched the nation's first personalized cancer decision support tool, “My Cancer Genome,” to help physicians and researchers track the latest developments in personalized cancer medicine and connect with clinical research trials for their patients.

Drug discovery center focuses on brain disorders

VUMC established a new Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery in March to accelerate research that may lead to new treatments for Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia and other disorders of the brain.

Grant bolsters molecular imaging resource

The National Center for Research Resources awarded Vanderbilt $10.3 million over the next five years to establish a National Research Resource for Imaging Mass Spectrometry.

VUMC to lead national CTSA consortium

In June, VUMC was awarded a five-year $20 million federal grant to coordinate a national consortium that aims to advance biomedical research nationwide.

Emergency Medicine research training

The Department of Emergency Medicine was named to receive one of the nation’s first training grants in emergency medicine from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Grant bolsters personalized medicine efforts

Vanderbilt University’s efforts in personalized medicine — health care that is tailored to each individual’s genetic makeup — got a boost from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in September. NHGRI is awarding $25 million over the next four years to a network of institutions, including Vanderbilt, to discover links between genetic information and disease characteristics/symptoms in electronic medical records, and to use the findings to improve patient care.

VUMC teams with three Midstate hospitals

Leaders of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Maury Regional Medical Center, Northcrest Medical Center and Williamson Medical Center announced affiliation agreements in September establishing a partnership between these medical centers to work collaboratively to create new jointly operated programs and services in the counties where these hospitals reside. MORE

Study Finds More Young People Becoming Nurses

Significantly more young people are becoming registered nurses, reversing a 10-year decline in the number of nurses entering the profession and easing some concerns about a looming nursing shortage in the United States according to a new study released in the December issue of Health Affairs. Findings show a 62 percent increase in the number of 23- to 26-year-olds who became registered nurses between 2002 and 2009, a growth rate not seen in this age group since the 1970s, according to the research team of RAND Corporation health economist David Auerbach, Vanderbilt University School of Nursing’s Peter Buerhaus and Dartmouth College professor of economics Doug Staiger. MORE

New Schizophrenia Drug Candidates Entering Prep for First-in-Human Testing

The Vanderbilt Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery announced that new drug candidates for schizophrenia generated from its ongoing collaboration with Janssen Pharmaceutica, Nev., are now entering the stage of preparation for first-in-human clinical testing. The progression of new drug candidates is the latest evidence that a new collaborative model for drug discovery pioneered at Vanderbilt may help identify and develop innovative candidate drugs for treatment of major brain disorders. In separate efforts, Vanderbilt recently announced discovery of drug candidates that could relieve symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and fragile X syndrome, the most common genetic cause of autism. For each of these programs, early support by the National Institutes of Health was critical for establishing the basic science underpinnings that encouraged further investment in drug discovery. MORE

New Method for Enhancing Thermal Conductivity Could Cool Computer Chips, Lasers and Other Devices

The surprising discovery of a new way to tune and enhance thermal conductivity gives engineers a new tool for managing thermal effects in smart phones and computers, lasers and a number of other powered devices. The finding was made by a group of engineers headed by Deyu Li, a Vanderbilt University associate professor of mechanical engineering. Li and his collaborators discovered that the thermal conductivity of a pair of thin strips of material called boron nanoribbons can be enhanced by up to 45 percent depending on the process that they used to stick the two ribbons together. The research was performed with financial support from the National Science Foundation, Lockheed Martin's Engineering and Technology University Research Initiatives program and the Office of Naval Research. MORE

Study Investigates Impact of Health Reform Act Policies

John Graves, Ph.D., a Vanderbilt University assistant professor of Preventive Medicine and member of the Institute of Medicine and Public Health and the Center for Health Services Research, is studying the potential impact of insurance expansion policies that states are considering as part of the Affordable Care Act. In a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Graves and his co-authors used “micro-simulation” models to show that proposed Basic Health Programs, intended to help avoid repeated plan and provider switching for patients whose incomes change, may only add to further switching unless the plans are properly designed and applied. MORE

Study Leads to Simpler Therapy for Treating Latent Tuberculosis

Research led by Timothy Sterling, Vanderbilt University professor of medicine, has led to an important change in The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention‘s (CDC) recommendations in the regimen for prevention of the centuries-old scourge, tuberculosis. On Friday, Dec. 9, the CDC announced in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that the new regimen, which takes one-third the time of current therapy, offers an effective treatment option for many patients at high risk for developing TB. The study of 8,000 patients in four countries over 10 years showed that just twelve doses, given once weekly, of a drug called isoniazid (INH) combined with another TB drug called rifapentine was as effective. The Metro Nashville Public Health Department was one of the sites for Sterling’s study, which was funded by the CDC. MORE

‘Silent Stokes’ in Children with Sickle Cell Disease Investigated

Vanderbilt researchers, as part of a multicenter study, have found that children who have sickle cell disease along with high blood pressure and anemia are at an increased risk for silent strokes. Michael DeBaun, M.D., vice chair for Clinical Research for Vanderbilt’s Department of Pediatrics, is the principal investigator of the ongoing Silent Cerebral Infarct Transfusion (SIT) Trial, an international study involving 25 sites. The $18 million, NIH-funded SIT trial is the largest study to date on children with sickle cell. Strokes in children are rare, but are a more common neurologic condition of children with sickle cell. A silent stroke is a permanent injury to the brain that affects children’s ability to think. Often, these children show no overt symptoms. MORE

Vanderbilt Sets Record for Number of New AAAS Fellows

Fourteen members of Vanderbilt University’s faculty have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) this year. This is the largest number of Vanderbilt fellows to be elected in a single year on record. They are among 539 fellows from around the country selected by their peers because of their “scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.” The new fellows will be recognized on Feb. 18 at the 2012 AAAS annual meeting in Vancouver, Canada. Vanderbilt University has 53 AAAS fellows among its current faculty. Twenty-eight of them have been elected in the last three years. MORE

Informatics Team Creates Gene App, Wins National Contest

Three members of the Vanderbilt community are among the winners of Show Off  Your Apps, a national software application contest sponsored by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) in Bethesda, Md. They are Bing Zhang, assistant professor of biomedical informatics, and two former members of his lab, Jerome Jourquin and Dexter Duncan. NLM’s contest solicited applications that use the library’s data to develop innovative ways for people to obtain and share scientific and medical information. The Vanderbilt team submitted their Web-based application, GLAD4U, which is short for Gene List Automatically Derived for You. MORE

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