Medicine & Health

New insight into one of the most common inherited causes of brain tumors may help physicians diagnose and treat the learning disabilities that often accompany the condition, neurofibromotosis 1. The School of Medicine’s David H. Gutmann is the study’s senior author. 

A study published July 20 in JAMA Pediatrics provides even more compelling evidence that growing up in poverty has detrimental effects on a child’s brain. Dealing with this must become “our top public health priority,” writes the School of Medicine’s Joan Luby, MD, in an accompanying editorial.

Randall J. Bateman, MD, the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Distinguished Professor of Neurology at the School of Medicine, has received a MetLife Foundation Award for Medical Research.  Bateman, a leader in Alzheimer’s disease research, is the university’s fifth researcher to receive the prize.

A team of researchers, including neuroscientists from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has developed a wireless device the width of a human hair that can be implanted in the brain and activated by remote control to deliver drugs to brain cells. The technology, demonstrated for the first time in mice, one day may be used to treat pain, depression, epilepsy and other neurological disorders in people by targeting therapies to specific brain circuits.

Studying mice, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified two signaling molecules that are required for the proper development of a part of the inner ear called the cochlea. The study contributes to the understanding of inner ear development, a first step toward the goal of being able to recover lost hearing.

Faculty and staff in the plastic and reconstructive surgery, urologic surgery and public health sciences divisions in the Department of Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have completed all four levels of training offered by the medical school’s diversity and inclusion team.

Infections with one of the most troublesome and least understood antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” are increasing at alarming rates, particularly in health-care settings. But by studying A. baumannii, a frequent cause of difficult-to-treat infections in hospitals,  researchers have identified a naturally occurring​ process that restores its vulnerability to antibiotics.

John A. Cooper, MD, PhD, has been named head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Washington University School of Medicine. 

Jianmin Cui, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, is taking an innovative approach to finding new drug candidates to treat Long QT syndrome with a four-year, $3.1 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has awarded Siteman Cancer Center​ at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis an “exceptional” rating, based on a rigorous review of Siteman’s research programs. The rating is the highest possible by the NCI, the principal federal institute that funds cancer research.