Medicine & Health

Interferon — a critical protein that mediates the body’s defense against a wide variety of infectious agents and tumors — may soon have greater therapeutic value as the result of a new study by researchers at the School of Medicine.

A monoclonal antibody that can effectively treat mice infected with West Nile virus has an intriguing secret: Contrary to scientists’ expectations, it does not block the virus’s ability to attach to host cells. Instead, the antibody somehow stops the infectious process at a later point.

Survival of heart attack and unstable angina patients placed on beta-blocker therapy corresponds to specific variations in their genes, according to a study by researchers at the School of Medicine and the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City.

MilbrandtJeffrey Milbrandt, M.D., Ph.D, professor of pathology and immunology, internal medicine and of neurology, will become the first David Clayson Professor of Neurology on Sept. 22.

Neuroscientists at the School of Medicine have assembled a first-of-its kind atlas of the folds of the cerebral cortex, the wrinkled surface layer of the brain credited with many of the higher cognitive functions that make us human.

NagamiInfectious diseases specialist Pamela Nagami will deliver the Olin Fellows Lecture for the Assembly Series at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 5th in Graham Chapel. Her talk will focus on the exotic and strange infectious diseases she has encountered throughout her medical career. The lecture is free and open to the public.

A new study that enrolled nearly 50,000 women has revealed that digital mammography can detect breast cancer better than conventional film-based mammography in certain groups of women.

Cancer patients infected with either of two strains of human papillomavirus were twice as likely to die of their disease.

“We really thought that myosin II was just a motor, but it seems to help steer as well,” said senior investigator Paul C. Bridgman.

WUSM researchers believe a vitamin found in vegetables may serve as a safe, ingestible sunscreen for humans. They are currently looking for volunteers for a related study.