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

The Wright Center has awarded three VCU researchers grants from the CCTR Endowment grant program for health sciences research. The awards support preliminary studies that enable researchers to develop hypotheses, collect preliminary data and establish methods necessary for successful external funding. Rebecca Martin, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, was awarded […]

The Wright Center has named Gretchen Neigh, Ph.D., the new co-director of its Ph.D. program. Neigh is an associate professor in the VCU School of Medicine’s Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology and comes to the Wright Center with a wealth of teaching and mentoring experience, as well as research spanning across multiple systems and levels […]

Paul “Pee-J” Beverly doesn’t remember being airlifted to VCU Health from Lexington, Va., last fall. In fact, he doesn’t remember much of his COVID-19 experience at all. But his girlfriend, Angela Griffin, does. “It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever been through,” she said. “Not being able to see him, barely being able […]

Nina Exner, Ph.D., calls her job a ‘funny profession.’ Being a research data librarian means different things at different institutions, but for Exner it translates largely into data management. She helps VCU researchers comply – appropriately and ethically – with the data management plans required by the government or foundations who give them grants. The […]

In March 2020, when the pandemic hit, there were no approved treatments or vaccines for COVID-19. A little more than a year later, much of the world is being vaccinated, and fewer people with COVID-19 are dying — kept alive and off ventilators with the help of approved treatments. None of that would be possible […]

The 2021 VCU Science Communication Award was awarded to Sean Koebley, Ph.D., for his presentation: “Goodbye, P-value: Practical Bayesian Statistics To Replace Frequentist Statistics.” Koebley is a postdoctoral fellow in the Physics Department at VCU where he works with Jason Reed, Ph.D., studying novel methods for detecting genetic mutations using biophysics. This talk is the third Koebley […]

Health care is generally one-size-fits-all. When you visit the doctor, your treatments are often the same as everyone else’s. Wouldn’t it be great if your health care were tailored specifically to you? This is called precision medicine. Precision medicine takes into account: Environment — where you live Lifestyle — for example, what you eat Biology […]

The hormone prolactin has long been understood to play a vital role in breast growth and development and the production of milk during pregnancy. But a pair of recent studies conducted at VCU Massey Cancer Center finds strong evidence that prolactin also acts as a major contributor to breast cancer development and that the hormone […]

Every day, millions of people in health care, from oncologists to rehabilitation specialists to dentists, use the tools at their disposal to help patients get better. “And everyone runs into times when they say, what if?” said L. Franklin Bost, MBA. “What if I had something better? What if I could give someone better treatment? […]

How would you react if someone started a conversation by saying what was wrong with you and your family? Probably not well. And that’s exactly what health researchers often do, when they try to talk to community members, said Maghboeba Mosavel, Ph.D, an associate professor at the VCU School of Medicine’s Department of Health Behavior […]