Medicine & Health

Olga Pontes is Going FISHin’.Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have made an important breakthrough in understanding a pathway plant cells take to silence unwanted or extra genes using short bits of RNA. Basically, they have made it possible to see where, and how, the events in the pathway unfold within the cell, and seeing is believing, as the old saying goes. Craig Pikaard, Ph.D., Washington University professor of biology in Arts & Sciences and his collaborators have described the roles that eight proteins in Arabidopsis plants play in a pathway that brings about DNA methylation, an epigenetic function that involves a chemical modification of cytosine, one of the four chemical subunits of DNA. More…

Neurosurgeons at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are renewing calls for a ban on use of all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) by children under age 16 after a 10-year review of injuries caused by the vehicles.

Image courtesy of Jewish Hospital; Kleinert, Kutz and Associates Hand Care Center; and University of LouisvilleLimb transplantation involves several kinds of tissue.Years ago, the idea of attaching a donor limb onto a patient’s body would have been the stuff of science fiction. But to date about two-dozen people around the world have received hand transplants. Thomas Tung, M.D., conducts research within this relatively unorthodox realm of surgery, investigating the use of therapy that could potentially allow the body to accept donor tissue without the use of immunosuppressive medication.

Red areas of the circled leg in the right image show increased blood flow due to angiogenic cells.To speed healing at sites of injury – such as heart muscle after a heart attack or brain tissue after a stroke – doctors would like to be able to hasten the formation of new blood vessels. One promising approach is to “mobilize” patients’ blood vessel-forming cells, called angiogenic cells, so these cells can reach the injured area. Recently, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis demonstrated that a drug called AMD3100 can mobilize angiogenic cells from bone marrow of human patients in a matter of hours.

An experimental anti-cancer regimen combined a diuretic, a Parkinson’s disease medication and a drug ordinarily used to reverse the effect of sedatives. In research conducted at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the unusual mixture inhibited the growth of aggressive prostate tumors in laboratory mice.

A new drug has increased survival rates among children with a deadly form of muscular dystrophy called Pompe disease. Now WUSM researchers are testing the drug, Myozyme, in adults with Pompe.

Albert Pujols took part in laboratory tests similar to those conducted on Ruth in 1921.

A progressive neurodegenerative disorder that is often fatal within the first two decades of life may be treatable via a molecule already targeted by approved drugs, scientists at the School of Medicine and other institutions report.

The Washington University Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Barnes-Jewish Hospital have begun construction of a new, $13 million outpatient orthopaedic facility on property in a prime west St. Louis County location.

Peter Westervelt, M.D., Ph.D., has been named director of the bone marrow transplantation and leukemia section of the Division of Oncology at the School of Medicine. Westervelt, associate professor of medicine, succeeds John F. DiPersio, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine, in the position.