Medicine & Health

Gerald Andriole, MD, chief of urologic surgery at the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is a co-author of new research showing that many men with prostate cancer do not need immediate treatment, especially if they have low PSA scores or low-risk tumors that are unlikely to grow and spread.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded more than $2 million to a team of scientists from Washington University in St. Louis and InvivoSciences, a biotechnology startup with WUSTL roots, to construct artificial tissue models that will allow the rapid testing of new drugs for heart failure.

A unique summer research program is providing 11 students who attend Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., with invaluable experience at the School of Medicine. The program offers the Meharry students the opportunity to conduct cutting-edge research with the School of Medicine’s renowned physicians and scientists.

Researchers, led by Jean E. Schaffer, MD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received a $4.7 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to investigate heart disease in patients with diabetes.

Vikas Dharnidharka, MD, an award-winning specialist in pediatric kidney disease and transplantation, has been named director of the Division of Nephrology in the Department of Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Cardiologists, including Samuel A. Wickline, MD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a noninvasive imaging technique that may help determine whether children who have had heart transplants are showing early signs of rejection. The technique could reduce the need for these patients to undergo invasive imaging tests every one to two years.

Working in mice, surgeons and scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, have captured the first images of a beating heart at a resolution so detailed they can track individual immune cells swarming into the heart muscle, causing the inflammation that is so common after a heart attack or heart surgery.

A change in the formula of a frequently abused prescription painkiller has many abusers switching to a drug that is potentially more dangerous, according to School of Medicine researchers. Since the formula change makes inhaling or injecting the opioid drug OxyContin more difficult, many users are switching to heroin.

Scientists have assembled the most detailed chronology to date of the human brain’s long, slow slide into full-blown Alzheimer’s disease. Through an international research partnership known as the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer’s Network (DIAN), scientists at Washington University and elsewhere evaluated pre-symptomatic markers of Alzheimer’s disease in subjects from families genetically predisposed to develop the disorder.

Children with a rare syndrome that includes a form of insulin-dependent diabetes have brain abnormalities that appear to set the stage for cognitive problems later in life, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Scientists, including Tamara Hershey, PhD, had assumed those brain changes occurred late in the disease process, but the new findings suggest that some changes occur early in childhood.