Medicine & Health

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Better memory performance (week of Sept. 6) • Predicting the spread of cancer (week of Sept. 13) • Curing diabetes in rats (week of Sept. 20) • Treating diabetes (week of Sept. 27)

Temple Grandin transforms our views of how animals and autistic people perceive the world and how they connect. Her Assembly Series talk “The Boundaries of Humanity” is at 11 a.m. on Oct. 4 in Graham Chapel.

KellyDaniel Kelly has been named director of the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases in the Department of Medicine at the School of Medicine. Kelly is the Alumni Endowed Professor of Cardiovascular Diseases and professor of medicine, of pediatrics and of molecular biology and pharmacology and a cardiologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Gene expression mapScientists at the School of Medicine have developed a method to predict whether melanoma of the eye will spread to the liver, where it quickly turns deadly. They also believe the molecular screening test may one day help determine the prognosis of patients with some types of skin melanoma. The researchers found that a particular molecular signature — a pattern of activation of a group of genes in the tumor cells — accurately predicts risk for metastasis.

An approach proven to cure a rat model of type 1 or juvenile-onset diabetes also works in a rat model of type 2 or adult-onset diabetes, according to a new report from researchers at the School of Medicine.

A long-term study of the elderly has revealed that their average rate of weight loss doubles in the year before symptoms of Alzheimer’s-type dementia first become detectable. The finding may be useful to researchers seeking ways to detect and treat Alzheimer’s before it causes irreversible brain damage.

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.