Medicine & Health

​​A new study shows that girls ages 9 to 15 who regularly ate peanut butter or nuts were 39 percent less likely to develop benign breast disease by age 30. Benign breast disease, although noncancerous, increases risk of breast cancer later in life.

A long-term study of older adults led by Anne Fagan (right) has helped validate a new system for identifying and classifying older adults with preclinical Alzheimer’s disease. Many researchers think this stage of the disease, which can last a decade or more, is critical window for slowing or stopping Alzheimer’s treatments.

Researchers at the School of Medicine and Imperial College London are the first to identify the site where the widely used anesthetic drug propofol binds to receptors in the brain to sedate patients during surgery. Shown is a photoanalogue of propofol to identify where it binds to receptors. The small green circles show the site.

Daniel Coyne, MD, specializes in the treatment of patients on dialysis. He’s a strong believer in seeing that patients’ interests are put first. That philosophy spurred him to fight against the overuse of the anti-anemia drug Epogen in dialysis patients. The drug increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes and at one time was one of the top-selling prescription medicines in the United States. 

The Program in Audiology and Communication Sciences (PACS) at the School of Medicine has received a five-year, $1.18 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to prepare graduate-level teachers of children who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Breast cancer that spreads to other organs is extremely difficult to treat. Doctors can buy patients time, but a cure remains elusive. Now, researchers at the School of Medicine have shown that human breast tumors transplanted into mice are excellent models of metastatic cancer and could be valuable tools in the search for better treatments. Shown are human breast cancer cells (red) growing amid mouse cells (green).

Faculty members manned posters highlighting their research at a recent Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences event geared toward helping graduate students meet faculty and learn about research before signing up for laboratory rotations. The event is an engaging step for students earning their PhDs or MD/PhDs through the Medical Scientist Training Program. Pictured is student Allyson Mayer visiting with Carlos Bernal-Mizrachi, MD, at the event.

As part of ongoing efforts to bolster pediatric research and lead to new discoveries, Children’s Discovery Institute plans to award more than $2.4 million to research initiatives at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

Finding ways to diagnose and treat Alzheimer’s disease has frustrated scientists and clinicians for decades. But now the battle has reached a potentially significant milestone: the launch of the first clinical trials to test whether giving new drug treatments before dementia can prevent Alzheimer’s. Shown are School of Medicine MDs and Alzheimer’s researchers Randall Bateman (left) and John C. Morris.

Andrew Brimer and Abigail Cohen, May graduates from the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis and co-founders of the med-tech startup Sparo Labs, have won the $150,000 CIMIT Student Technology Prize for Primary Care, bringing their total competition winnings to more than $275,000.