Medicine & Health

Scientists at the School of Medicine have identified a biological marker that may help predict overall survival of people with deadly brain tumors. The marker is made by noncancerous cells known as monocytes (pictured in brown).

Premature babies often spend their first months of life in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) — environments that, in recent years, have seen transformations, with hospitals adding private rooms to NICUs in place of open wards. But research at the School of Medicine adds new information to the discussion over what is the optimal setting for infants in the NICU. Shown is the study’s first author, Bobbi Pineda, PhD, in the NICU at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

Timothy J. Eberlein, MD, the William K. Bixby Professor of Surgery and chairman of the Department of Surgery at the School of Medicine, was inducted last month as an honorary fellow into the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, one of the world’s oldest organizations dedicated to advances in surgery.

A gene that controls how quickly smokers process nicotine also predicts whether people who try to kick the habit are likely to respond to nicotine replacement therapy, according to new research from an investigator at the School of Medicine.

By analyzing the DNA in more than 3,000 tumors, scientists led by Li Ding, PhD, at The Genome Institute have identified 127 repeatedly mutated genes that likely drive the growth of a range of cancers in the body. The discovery sets the stage for devising new diagnostic tools and more personalized cancer treatments.

New research at the School of Medicine shows that chronic itching, which can occur in many medical conditions, is different from the urge to scratch a mosquito bite. Chronic itching appears to incorporate more than just the nerve cells that normally transmit itch signals. In the image shown, researchers identified elevated signaling (in red) in nerve cells involved in both itch and in pain.

Valerie S. Ratts, MD, has been named the new associate dean for admissions at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, effective Jan. 1.

Twin brothers Obi and Malachi Griffith and their colleagues at The Genome Institute have created a massive online database that matches thousands of genes linked to cancer and other diseases with drugs that target those genes.

Scientists from the School of Medicine and in the Netherlands have found that a class of specialized cells in the stomach reverts to stem cells more often than researchers had thought. One or more chief cells, which normally make digestive juices in the stomach, have changed into a stem cell in the image shown.

The obesity epidemic and how science may be able to impact it is the focus of the upcoming annual conference of the Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis. Graham Colditz, MD, DrPH, deputy director of the Institute for Public Health and a disease prevention expert at Siteman Cancer Center, will deliver the keynote address.