Medicine & Health

Biologists in the laboratory of Hani Zaher in Arts & Sciences examined the modified nucleotides used in COVID-19 vaccines. The modifications faithfully produce the protein products as designed, a welcome sign for future RNA therapeutics.

ShiNung Ching and collaborators are working with a $1 million NIH grant to predict and prevent some injuries related to neurological illnesses.

Chenyang Lu at the McKelvey School of Engineering is evaluating the potential use of artificial intelligence to benefit patients’ health — and doctors’ well-being.

Spongy electrodes developed in the lab of Chuan Wang at the McKelvey School of Engineering will help map the uterus to better understand preterm birth.

Researchers in Jianmin Cui’s lab at the McKelvey School of Engineering have looked at drug interactions and mechanisms behind a group of proteins to potentially develop a new strategy to treat epilepsy.

Adia Harvey Wingfield, in Arts & Sciences, and John Atkinson, at the School of Medicine, will receive Washington University’s 2022 faculty achievement awards, Chancellor Andrew D. Martin announced. 

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have shown that an experimental nanoparticle-based drug therapy protects mice from sudden death due to the rupture of a major blood vessel in the abdomen, pointing the way toward a new strategy for treating deadly abdominal aortic aneurysms.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a five-year $1.67 million grant to Chuan Wang, assistant professor at the McKelvey School of Engineering, for research on preterm birth. Wang and an interdisciplinary team will develop soft sensors with stretchable electrodes to generate 3D maps of the uterine surface and better understand contractions.

The McKelvey School of Engineering’s Hong Chen and her team are developing tiny sensors to detect blast-induced traumatic brain injury with new funding from the Office of Naval Research.

The Tracy Family SILQ Center for Neurodegenerative Biology has been established at the School of Medicine. The center aims to help researchers discover, study and validate biomarkers of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, with a goal of identifying new drug targets and creating better diagnostic and prognostic tests.