Author: Ken Duenke

In these PET images, a cervical tumor glows brightly before therapy (left), but is no longer visible after therapy.Whole-body PET (positron emission tomography) scans done three months after completion of cervical cancer therapy can ensure that patients are disease-free or warn that further interventions are needed, according to a study at the School of Medicine. “This is the first time we can say that we have a reliable test to follow cervical cancer patients after therapy,” says Julie Schwarz, a Barnes-Jewish Hospital resident in the Department of Radiation Oncology.

Washington University in St. Louis has hosted more debates than any other institution in history. Since 1992, the university has been asked by the Commission on Presidential Debates to host debates in five consecutive elections.

A multinational team of researchers has shown for the first time that the immune system can stop the growth of a cancerous tumor without actually killing it. Scientists have been working for years to use the immune system to eradicate cancers, a technique known as immunotherapy. The new findings prove an alternate to this approach exists: When the cancer can’t be killed with immune attacks, it may be possible to find ways to use the immune system to contain it.

Joe Angeles/WUSTL Photo ServicesThe Washington University volleyball team won the 2007 NCAA Div. III Championship with a 3-2 win over the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in Bloomington, Ill., on Saturday, Nov. 17. The title is the WUSTL volleyball team’s Div. III-leading ninth in school history, and the first since the 2003 season.

The cowpox virus, a much milder cousin of the deadly smallpox virus, can keep infected host cells from warning the immune system that they have been compromised, researchers at the School of Medicine have found. The scientists also showed that more virulent poxviruses, such as the strains of monkeypox prevalent in Central Africa, likely have the same ability.

• Various lane closures are scheduled through Nov. 16.

Photo by Robert BostonMonica Smith (left) and Ashley Estes, both students at Cleveland NJROTC School at Pruitt, learn from Jacqui Hawkins, a second-year medical student, how to extract DNA from a strawberry using shampoo and alcohol. The high-school students were at the School of Medicine Nov. 7 for Women in Science Day.

Photo by Whitney CurtisJunior Kelley Greenman (left) and seniors Shaina Goodman and David Israel dance during the record-breaking Dance Marathon Nov. 3 in the Athletic Complex.

Go to BearSports The No. 7 volleyball team won the NCAA Division III Midwest Regional Championship with a 3-1 victory against No. 6 Carthage College Nov. 10, in Kenosha, Wis. The win means the Bears will make their eighth-consecutive appearance in the NCAA quarterfinals, which begin Thursday, Nov. 15, against Emory University in Bloomington, Ill. […]

A gene linked to pediatric brain tumors is an essential driver of early brain development, researchers at the School of Medicine have found. The study, published in October in Cell Stem Cell, reveals that the neurofibromatosis 1 (NF1) gene helps push stem cells down separate paths that lead them to become two major types of brain cells: support cells known as astrocytes and brain neurons.