Collaborating Groups

V-POLARIS leverages large population cohorts involving millions of participants with granular mechanistic studies to design and conduct clinical trials to improve human health locally and globally and to train the next generation of population scientists/clinical trialists. For the first 7 years, they were called the Vanderbilt Center for Clinical Cardiovascular Outcomes Research and Trials Evaluation (V-CREATE) team, lead by Dr. Matthew Freiberg. Since July of 2014, the V-CREATE team has received 10 new R01/U01 grants, a new P01 center grant, a new K12 training program and has published 97 manuscripts in journals such as Journal of the American Medical Association, British Medical Journal, Circulation, JAMA cardiology, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Lancet HIV, and Nature Medicine.

The Tennessee Center for AIDS Research (TN-CFAR) leverages complementary strengths of its four partner institutions to have broad and substantial impact on the HIV epidemic. Located in Nashville, TN, our CFAR was established in 2015, under the leadership of Professor Simon Mallal. The partnership includes a research-intensive medical institution (Vanderbilt University Medical Center, VUMC), a historically black medical college (Meharry Medical College, MMC), an academically engaged state health department (Tennessee Department of Health, TDH), and a sophisticated HIV community-based organization (Nashville CARES). This partnership has fostered collaborations that would be unimaginable without CFAR.

Vanderbilt Technologies for Advanced Genomics (VANTAGE) is a genomics core laboratory consolidation initiated by an $8.6 million ARRA funded NIH grant award to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, with an overall goal of creating a new collaborative [VANTAGE] shared resource that accelerates discovery in genome sciences and personalized medicine, providing state-of-the art research shared resource facilities and technology. VANTAGE is a one-stop genomics research resource, including: Illumina genotyping, DNA extraction and banking, Affymetrix–based genotyping and expression microarrays, Sanger sequencing and Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) among many other specialized services. These activities are now part of an overall structure that takes full advantage of their new physical co-location together with the Flow Cytometry Shared Resource in VANTAGE.

The Roden Lab has a strong tradition of translating research from the bedside to the bench and back again. The overarching theme of our research is how genomic variation affects variability in disease susceptibility and response to drug treatment. Our focus at the bench is on abnormalities of cardiac rhythm, and individual projects incorporate the expertise of the laboratory in mining electronic health records (EHRs) and in basic electrophysiologic methods, including the use of emerging medium and high-throughput approaches for functional genomics. Principal Investigator Dr. Dan Roden is a leading researcher in pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine. In addition to the active projects listed below, he directed Vanderbilt’s site in the NIH’s Pharmacogenetics Research Network (PGRN) and the American Heart Association’s Strategically Focused Atrial Fibrillation Research Network (AF-SFRN).

Advancements made at the Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research (VCAR) are instrumental in uncovering the intricate mechanisms underlying the development of addiction and substance use disorder in the brain. Research breakthroughs are actively contributing to the creation of effective treatments for individuals grappling with substance use disorder.