C. KENNETH AND DIANNE WRIGHT CENTER FOR CLINICAL AND TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH VCU BLOG

The VCU M.D.-Ph.D. student has advanced from the Wright Center’s T32 training grant to her own NIH fellowship, developing new ways to measure pain that could help close the gap between the lab and the clinic. Naomi Carter has a mission, and she’ll tell you exactly what it is. “My mission is to improve how […]

The M.D.-Ph.D. student believes combining medicine and research will help her make the largest impact. She was honored in the spring for her work on an art project that built cancer awareness in the Richmond area. Nina Dashti-Gibson came to cancer research by following a question with few clear answers. As an M.D.-Ph.D. student in […]

Led by Melanie K. Bean, Ph.D.—co-lead of Resources and Services at VCU’s Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research—a $3.85M NIH trial is testing telehealth as a means to bring effective treatment for teen obesity into homes. This study leverages Wright Center expertise in its research design.

A multidisciplinary VCU research team has been awarded a multi-school CCTR Endowment Fund grant from the C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research to investigate the root causes of accelerated brain aging. The project — “Investigating astrocytes as agents of accelerated brain aging from a neurodevelopmental perspective” — is led by […]

VCU’s research-dedicated MRI facility returns from a comprehensive renovation with a new Philips MR7700 — and capabilities that open new frontiers for investigators across the university. When a heavy crane appeared on East Cary Street in January, hoisting equipment above the roofline of a 3-story office building in downtown Richmond, it marked the beginning of […]

Every year on May 20, the global research community observes International Clinical Trials Day, commemorating the date in 1747 when Scottish physician James Lind conducted what is widely recognized as the first controlled clinical trial — a systematic test of scurvy treatments aboard a British naval vessel. This year, the C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright […]

After 12 years, 57 publications, and a hand in securing millions in research funding, Amy Olex, Ph.D., is leaving the Wright Center — but not VCU. Her bioinformatics pipelines powered landmark cancer research, her COVID data work shaped health policy across six countries, and her teaching, from the "Bioinformatics 101" seminar series to a graduate course still running today, brought hundreds of researchers into the fold. "I don't know of anywhere else where I would have been able to get all of that experience in one job," she says. "The Wright Center really put me in a unique position."

Two graduate students from the VCU C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research were among the top honorees at the 20th Annual Women’s Health Research Day. The event, hosted by the VCU Institute for Women’s Health on April 28, 2026, centered on the theme “Midlife Matters: Integrating Menopause Research, Innovation, and […]

A policy change effective for funding opportunities with due dates on or after May 25, 2026 affects how certain human studies are categorized — and funded. What’s Changing? The NIH has announced that Basic Experimental Studies with Humans (BESH) will no longer be classified as clinical trials. This is a significant shift that affects how […]

The Wright Center and VCU Health’s Enterprise Analytics built a specialized informatics pipeline within VCU Health’s Epic electronic health record (EHR) system to collect high-integrity data for a study on SNAP benefits. In the process, they earned national recognition for their software innovation.