Medicine & Health

Deanna M. Barch, chair of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences and the Gregory B. Couch Professor of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine, and Randall J. Bateman, MD, professor of neurology at the School of Medicine and director of the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer’s Network and Trials Unit, have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

A new, international phase 3 clinical trial led by the Washington University School of Medicine and funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will investigate the potential of three drugs to tame a dangerous inflammatory response seen in some COVID-19 patients.

Carlos Ponce, MD, PhD, assistant professor of neuroscience at the School of Medicine, is one of 20 people to receive a 2020 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. Packard fellows are among the nation’s top early-career scientists. Ponce studies how visual recognition works in the brain.

School of Medicine researchers have received an $8.5 million grant to study the role of gut viruses in inflammatory bowel disease. Tools developed in the course of the project could accelerate research into other roles of the virome in health and disease.

A new grant for research at the School of Medicine focuses on brain scans and other markers of Alzheimer’s. The aim is to establish whether early markers of disease in white populations also apply to African Americans.

Han Li, MD ’15, shares what it was likes to treat COVID-19 patients during the early days of the pandemic.

Vetta Thompson, the E. Desmond Lee Professor of Racial and Ethnic Studies at the Brown School, discusses how partnership and sustained community efforts are key components in addressing the racism that contributes to disparities in disease, including COVID-19.

New research — co-led by Washington University School of Medicine — has identified the most important features of cancer cells’ protein fragments, which can help distinguish the tumor from healthy tissue, enabling researchers to design better immunotherapies, including vaccines.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have received a grant to study the role of brain inflammation in Parkinson’s disease. The project focuses on whether inflammation aids the spread of Parkinson’s damage throughout the brain.

Keith Hengen, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received a three-year $1.8 million grant to study the role of sleep and waking behavior in shaping the brain’s neural dynamics. His research will help scientists understand how sleep contributes to healthy cognition and shed light on the mechanisms by which disrupted sleep worsens neurodegenerative and mental health disorders.