Medicine & Health

Researchers seeking insights into kidney failure in human infants have located the source of a 30-year-old mystery mutation that causes similar problems in a mouse line.

Photo by Robert BostonEmployees from Brown Shoe Company and physicians and staff from the Siteman Cancer CenterSiteman Cancer Center got quite a bargain when Brown Shoe Company, QVC and the Fashion Footwear Association of New York (FFANY) teamed up to offer half-price shoes at the 12th Annual QVC Presents “FFANY Shoes on Sale” event during October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The net proceeds benefit breast cancer research and education programs across the country.

The discovery by researchers at the School of Medicine of a mutated gene associated with a rare skin disorder should provide insight into more common diseases such as emphysema and aortic aneurysms.

The recent court ruling that allowed the School of Medicine to maintain control of tissue samples vital to cancer research was a victory for science as well as research participants’ rights, said Medical School Dean Larry Shapiro in a letter to the editors of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

YamaguchiWashington University orthopaedic surgeon Ken Yamaguchi, M.D., has been elected to the board of directors of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). He will serve the academy as member-at-large.

The results of a new study at the School of Medicine could eventually have oncologists removing their specialties from their shingles by making therapy based on a tumor’s anatomical location obsolete. When the researchers compared eight different kinds of cancerous tumors, they saw that whether the tumor was, for instance, a breast tumor, lung tumor or colon tumor didn’t correlate to how the cancers interacted with a standard anticancer drug.

SchafferJean Schaffer has won a Clinical Scientists Award in Translational Research from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF) to support her work on understanding how diabetes contributes to heart failure. Schaffer, associate professor of medicine and of molecular biology and pharmacology, was one of only 10 physician-scientists in the country to receive this year’s award.

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.