Month: March 2017

Women who pursue in vitro fertilization (IVF) to become pregnant are more likely to give birth if they have health insurance that covers the procedure, according to new research at the School of Medicine. The key reason is financial rather than medical: The high cost for one procedure prohibits many women from seeking a second if the first attempt fails.

Studying mice with breast tumors transplanted from patients, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Baylor College of Medicine have analyzed the proteins present in these tumors. Some protein alterations can be used to identify drugs that may work against some cancers.

Timothy A. Wencewicz, assistant professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been selected as a Cottrell Scholar by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement.

Question: Which building was the first on what’s now known as the Danforth Campus?

Peter G. Sortino, assistant vice chancellor at Washington University in St. Louis and a longtime St. Louis civic leader, died Friday, March 24, 2017, at his home in Sunset Hills, Mo., of pancreatic cancer. He was 62.

Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis is celebrating its centennial with a special reception Thursday, March 30 from 4-6pm.

The St. Louis Walk of Fame will posthumously induct Nobel Prize-winning neurobiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, April 6, on the Delmar Loop. Levi-Montalcini conducted much of her research at Washington University in St. Louis and is recognized for breakthroughs in the study of cell growth and development. She died at the age of 103 in her native Italy.

Long before the advent of agriculture, hunter gatherers began putting down roots in the Middle East, building more permanent homes and altering the ecological balance in ways that allowed the common house mouse to flourish, suggest new research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Images from in and around the Washington University campuses.

Star-shaped cells called astrocytes, long considered boring, “support cells,” are finally coming into their own. To everyone’s surprise they even play an important role in the body’s master clock, which schedules everything from the release of hormones to the onset of sleepiness.