Medicine & Health

Washington University Medical Center faculty, staff and students will perform their third annual winter concert at 4 p.m. Jan. 18 in the lobby of the Center for Advanced Medicine, 4921 Parkview Place. A reception will follow the concert. The event is free and open to the public.

Elaine Mardis, co-director of The Genome Institute at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is featured in Discover magazine’s “100 Top Stories of 2013,” for her pioneering work in cancer genomics.

Andrew S. Yoo, PhD, a researcher at the School of Medicine, has received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor given by the U.S. government to independent researchers early in their careers.

Working in mice, School of Medicine researchers report developing a gene delivery method long sought in the field of gene therapy: a deactivated virus carrying a gene of interest that can be injected into the bloodstream and make its way to the right cells. In this proof-of-concept study, they targeted tumor blood vessels in mice without affecting healthy tissues.

Bariatric surgery is effective at helping patients lose weight and improve obesity-related conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and sleep apnea, according to a review of published studies. Complications are possible following these procedures, but death rates generally are low, according to School of Medicine researchers who performed the analysis.

A new study in mice suggests that gene therapy may one day be a viable treatment for Alport syndrome, an inherited disease that leads to kidney failure.

Patients who experience ‘chemobrain’ following treatment for breast cancer show disruptions in brain networks that are not present in patients who do not report cognitive difficulties, according to School of Medicine researchers.

Cancer genetic counselor Jennifer Ivanovich helps bridge the gap between what genome sequencing can tell patients and what patients and their families want to know.

Huntington’s disease is a devastating, incurable disorder that results from the death of certain neurons in the brain. Rohit Pappu, PhD, and colleagues in the engineering and medical schools are conducting studies to learn from nature’s own strategies to battle the disease.

Widely used treatments for type 2 diabetes have different effects on the hearts of men and women, even as the drugs control blood sugar equally well in both sexes, according to researchers at the School of Medicine. The investigators used PET scans to measure heart and whole-body metabolism in patients taking common diabetes drugs. Pictured are researchers Janet B. McGill, MD, and Robert J. Gropler, MD.