Medicine & Health

The Washington University Department of Orthopaedic Surgery is hosting young women from St. Louis-area high schools to encourage them to pursue careers in orthopaedic surgery and engineering. The program, called the Perry Initiative, aims to get young women interested in those technical fields where women currently comprise only 7 percent of the professional workforce.

William Julius Wilson, the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University, will present this year’s Chancellor’s Fellows Lecture, “Race and Affirmative Opportunity in the Barack Obama Era” at 11 a.m. Tuesday, March 27, in Graham Chapel for the Assembly Series. His talk is free and open to the public.

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has received nearly $4.2 million from the Alzheimer’s Association to accelerate the launch of the first clinical trials to prevent Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms become apparent. John C. Morris, MD, the Harvey A. and Dorismae Hacker Friedman Professor of Neurology, heads the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer’s Network at the School of Medicine.

Patients and staff in several Barnes-Jewish Hospital resident clinics began moving into the 12-story Center for Outpatient Health at the corner of Forest Park and Euclid avenues March 12. Many of the clinics will be relocated by the end of March, with all moves complete by the end of spring.

Fourth-year students at Washington University School of Medicine, including Kevin Choong and Julietta Chang, learned March 16 where they will continue their medical training. This year, 121 students matched to internships or residencies nationwide and in Canada.

A new drug makes chemotherapy more effective in treating acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer of the white blood cells, according to John F. DiPersio, MD, PhD, and his colleagues at Washington University. Instead of attacking these cells directly, the drug helps drive them out of the bone marrow and into the bloodstream, where they are more vulnerable to chemotherapy.

Postdoctoral researchers will showcase their work at the 8th Annual Postdoc Scientific Symposium at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The symposium will be held from 11:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., March 29, 2012, at the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center Atrium and Connor Auditorium.

Batten disease is a rare but fatal neurological disorder that typically strikes young children. Working in mice with the infantile form of the disease, scientists have discovered dramatic improvements in life span and motor function by treating the animals with gene therapy and bone marrow transplantation.

Smoking, the leading preventable cause of mortality in the United States, continues to disproportionately impact lower income members of racial and ethnic minority groups. In a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health, Jason Q. Purnell, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, looked at how perceived discrimination influences smoking rates among these groups. “We found that regardless of race or ethnicity, the odds of current smoking were higher among individuals who perceived that they were treated differently because of their race, though racial and ethnic minority groups were more likely to report discrimination,” he says. 

With every meal, immune cells in the intestine stand like sentries at a citadel, turning away harmful bacteria but allowing vitamins and nutrients to pass. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified the cells that chaperone food antigens, or proteins, in the intestine so that the immune system doesn’t mount an attack. Their discovery provides scientists with a potential target for therapies against inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease and food allergies.