The VICB boasts over 70 faculty members, with appointments in 18 departments located in the School of Medicine and the College of Arts and Sciences. Consequently, VICB research spans a broad range of interests and is characterized by interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches. Many VICB members have affiliations with other key institutes and centers at Vanderbilt, including the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) the Institute of Imaging Science (VUIIS), the Center for Structural Biology (CSB), the Mass Spectrometry Research Center (MSRC) and the Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (VINSE). All investigators enjoy access to VICB core facilities that provide chemical synthesis, high throughput screening, antibody production, and small molecule NMR services. Here we provide a brief summary of major themes encompassed by VICB research efforts:

Cancer Biology and Medicine – Approximately half of VICB members belong to the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, so it is not surprising that cancer is a major focus of investigation. VICB researchers address every aspect of cancer biology and medicine from understanding the underlying genetic mutations that lead to malignancy, to developing new methods for cancer prevention, detection, and therapy. (Read more)

Neurodegenerative and Neuropsychiatric Diseases – The first Drug Discovery Program at Vanderbilt was established through the partnership of neuropharmacologist Jeff Conn and synthetic chemist Craig Lindsley. They were soon joined by Dave Weaver, who added his expertise in high throughput screening, and the resulting highly productive collaboration quickly led to major advances in the discovery of promising new agents for the treatment of neurological disease. (Read more)

Infectious Diseases and Immunity – Despite the success of antibiotics against many bacterial diseases, viral and parasitic illnesses remain a serious public health problem. In addition, the rise of antibiotic resistance has brought many previously controlled bacterial diseases back into play as major causes of morbidity and mortality. To address these challenges, VICB researchers are taking novel approaches to understand and combat infectious disease. (Read more)

Enzymatic and Nonenzymatic Lipid Oxidation in Human Health and Disease – Polyunsaturated fatty acids are a key component of cell membranes. These lipids are subject to free radical peroxidation reactions, which occur nonenzymatically, leading to the formation of reactive electrophiles that can damage membranes, proteins, and DNA. These processes are increased under states of “oxidative stress” and contribute to the pathogenesis of a range of neurological, cardiovascular, and inflammatory diseases, obesity, and cancer. Ironically, nature has also harnessed these reactions through the function of lipoxygenase and cyclooxygenase enzymes that catalyze the controlled stereospecific peroxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids to form a series of lipid signaling molecules. These lipid oxidation products regulate multiple immune, cardiovascular, neurological, and reproductive processes. The role of enzymatic and nonenzymatic lipid peroxidation in health and disease is a focus of research in a number of VICB member laboratories. (Read more)

Natural Products – Nature offers a marvelous diversity of chemical structures, and many of our valuable therapeutic agents have been derived from natural products. Thus, there is a growing interest in mining these resources for new drug discovery efforts. The chemistry of natural products is often complex and requires specialized synthetic and analytic techniques. VICB chemists are ready to meet this challenge. (Read more)

Synthetic and Medicinal Chemistry – A successful chemical biology program requires a strong foundation in synthetic chemistry. The VICB’s team of chemists provides that chemical support for institute-wide research efforts. But equally important, these researchers are actively discovering new reactions and reaction mechanisms that broaden our fundamental understanding of chemistry. (Read more)

New Technologies – Chemical biology research strives to apply the latest advances in chemical synthesis and analysis to complex biological systems. VICB researchers are at the forefront of developing and applying the latest approaches to the chemistry-biology interface.

Nanoscience: Nanotechnology is an exciting new field that interfaces chemistry, biology, and engineering to develop novel particulate materials of less than 100 nm diameter. The huge diversity of substances that can be produced through this new technology holds promise for revolutionizing multiple aspects of biology and medicine including in vivo and ex vivo imaging, drug delivery, protein and peptide delivery, and cancer diagnostics and therapeutics. (Read more)

Imaging: A revolution in biological imaging at the cellular and whole animal level is taking place, and VICB researchers are partnering with the Vanderbilt Institute of Imaging Science to maximize opportunities in this emerging field. (Read more)

High-Throughput Synthesis and Screening: Key to the practice of chemical biology is the discovery of new molecular probes that can be used to investigate the role of specific biochemical and signaling pathways in cellular physiological or pathophysiological processes. In addition to providing new insights into critical questions in biology, molecular probes also often pave the way for the development of new therapeutic agents. Efficient molecular probe discovery requires high throughput screening and chemical synthesis capabilities. The VICB is at the cutting edge in both of these critical disciplines. (Read more)

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and Other Spectroscopic Approaches: Organic chemists have used NMR for the characterization of small molecules for decades, and the VICB’s Small Molecule NMR Core Facility, under the direction of Don Stec provides state-of-the-art instrumentation and expertise for just that purpose. However, the use of NMR has now expanded to include the characterization of protein and nucleic acid macromolecules. Many VICB members, some in collaboration with the Center for Structural Biology (CSB), use this approach in addition to other spectroscopic methods to study a wide array biomolecular structures and interactions. (Read more)

X-ray Crystallography: X-ray crystallography is not a new technique, but recent advances have resulted in improvements in protein crystallization, data acquisition and data analysis that have kept this approach at the forefront of protein and nucleic acid structure determination. VICB investigators have taken advantage of the latest technology in X-ray crystallography to gain insight into the structure and function of key macromolecules. (Read more)

Mass Spectrometry, Proteomics, and Lipidomics: The past 20 years has seen an explosion in mass spectrometry technology, greatly facilitating the analysis of small molecules and macromolecules in a diverse range of contexts, including pure samples, complex mixtures, and even intact tissues. The Mass Spectrometry Research Center brings all of these new analytical modalities to Vanderbilt, and VICB investigators have not hesitated to capitalize on all of the advantages that state-of-the-art mass spectrometry has to offer. (Read more)

Computational Approaches and Bioinformatics: As the sophistication of molecular modeling and informatics software rapidly increases, computational approaches are taking an increasingly important role in the solution of complex chemical and biological problems. Many VICB members are successfully using these new methodologies to address interesting research challenges, and some concentrate on improving and/or developing new computational methodology. (Read more)

Chemical Approaches to Understanding Biological Processes – Although chemical biology approaches are often directed towards applied goals such as drug discovery, they are also highly useful in the quest to expand our knowledge of normal physiology at the cellular and whole organism level. Many VICB researchers have this as a primary goal. (Read more)