Medicine & Health

A newly opened clinical trial will evaluate the use of radioactive implants combined with surgical removal of small sections of lung to treat stage I lung cancer. The first patients are now being enrolled at the School of Medicine, and the trial will soon be opened at centers nationwide.

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • New pain management targets (week of Apr. 5) • Finding deadly cancer genes (week of Apr. 12) • Overweight adolescents study (week of Apr. 19) • Glucose-hungry tumors (week of Apr. 26)

Kelle H. Moley, M.D., an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, has been named vice chair for basic science research and director of the Division of Basic Science Research in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Researchers at the School of Medicine have added a gene in the bacterium Salmonella to the short list of genes regulated by a new mechanism known as the riboswitch.

The straightforward solution for many people living in poverty is building savings. For the 9 million disabled Americans living in poverty, the answer isn’t as simple. “The poverty rate among Americans with disabilities is nearly double that of persons without disabilities, and while there is a complex web of federal and state-based programs offering financial assistance to eligible persons with disabilities, policy rules often preclude the accumulation of assets, which are often key for exiting poverty,” says Michelle Putnam, Ph.D., assistant professor of social work at Washington University. “”New research and public policies have the potential to help people with disabilities to have greater economic resources and become more integrated into their communities.” More …

Neurons (shown here in green) fire more frequently in mice lacking Kv4.2 potassium channels.Studying mice, pain researchers at the School of Medicine have identified key components in the pain cascade that may provide targets for more effective analgesic drugs with potentially fewer side effects. Scientists have identified a potassium channel that plays a crucial role in what scientists call pain plasticity, the ability of molecules in the spinal cord to amplify or diminish the response to a painful stimulus.

Illustration of a lung volume reduction surgeryIn many cases of advanced emphysema, reducing the size of the lungs surgically has been shown to improve both survival and quality of life. But some emphysema patients can’t tolerate this bilateral operation. Now a study conducted by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Pennsylvania Health System has shown that unilateral, or one-sided, lung volume reduction surgery has significant benefits, offering help to those who are not candidates for the bilateral surgery. More…

Restricting calories may mean living longer.Can eating a low-calorie yet nutritionally balanced diet extend human life as it does in rodents? Preliminary research suggests it might, so researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are launching a long-term study to find out. More…

Islets isolated from a rat pancreasDiabetes researchers hoping to enlist the help of a protein targeted by cancer therapies have gained an important new insight into how the protein, known as mTOR, works in the pancreas. Ironically, diabetes researchers are hoping to promote the capability of mTOR that oncologists want to shut down: its ability to cause cells to reproduce by dividing into copies of themselves. That capacity can be deadly in tumors, but diabetes researchers want to use mTOR’s ability to make cells divide to maintain enough insulin-making beta cells in the pancreas to prevent diabetes. More…

<img src="/news/PublishingImages/4048_t.jpg" alt="Pretty fly — for a fruit fly. The areas stained blue are regions in the fruit fly where the spineless gene is expressed.” height=”211″ width=”150″ />Pretty fly – for a fruit fly. The areas stained blue are regions in the fruit fly where the spineless gene is expressed.A team of researchers that includes biologists from Washington University in St. Louis has discovered that a gene involved in the development and function of the fruit fly antenna also gives the organism its color vision. Claude Desplan, Ph.D., professor of biology at New York University, and his students made the discovery and provided the data. Ian Duncan, Washington University professor of biology, and his wife, research assistant Dianne Duncan, provided the Desplan laboratory fruit fly (Drosophila) clones and mutants and technical assistance that helped locate where the gene, called spineless, is expressed in the retina. More…