Medicine & Health

Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital have broken ground on the new Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center in south St. Louis County. Located on the southeast corner of the intersection of Interstate 55 and Butler Hill Road, the new facility will provide comprehensive outpatient cancer care that is more convenient for patients living in south St. Louis County and the surrounding area.

If Debbie Monolo, assistant dean for academic affairs and registrar at the School of Medicine, stands in Forest Park, she can almost see both of her worlds. To the east lies the School of Medicine, where she has worked for 38 years. And if she looks south, she can see “The Hill,” where she co-owns a boutique and plays an integral role in the vibrant local Italian community.

After defeating an infection, the immune system creates a memory of the attacker to make it easier to eliminate in the future. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered an important component of the immune system’s strategy for preserving such immunological memories.

Thomas W. Ferkol Jr., MD, has been named the first Alexis Hartmann, MD, Professor in Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Why do we like fatty foods so much? We can blame our taste buds. In the first study to identify a human receptor that can taste fat, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report that our tongues recognize and have an affinity for fat and that variations in a gene can make people more or less sensitive to the taste of fat in foods.

The chemotherapy drugs required to push a common form of adult leukemia into remission may contribute to DNA damage that can lead to a relapse of the disease in some patients, findings of a new study suggest.

Patients who die from sepsis are likely to have had suppressed immune systems that left them unable to fight infections, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown. The findings suggest that therapies to rev up the immune response may help save the lives of some patients with the disorder.

When it comes to communication in the brain, more is usually better. But now scientists, including Maurizio Corbetta, MD, have linked increased communication in a network of brain regions to more severe mental impairment in patients with early-stage multiple sclerosis (MS).

A new study shows that annual prostate cancer screening does not reduce deaths from the disease, even among men in their 50s and 60s and those with underlying health conditions. The study was published online Jan. 6 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Providing clues to deafness, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a gene that is required for proper development of the mouse inner ear. In humans, this gene, known as FGF20, is located in a portion of the genome that has been associated with inherited deafness in otherwise healthy families.