Medicine & Health

Researchers may now be a step closer to understanding what causes cataracts and what may help prevent them.

The American Academy of Neurology has honored him with the Potamkin Prize for Research in Pick’s, Alzheimer’s and Related Diseases.

During last year’s Komen St. Louis Race for the Cure, the Siteman Cancer Center fielded the event’s third-largest team.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has chosen the School of Medicine as one of four national research centers dedicated to the advancement of nanotechnology. The center, funded by a five-year, $12.5 grant, will be headed by WUSM chemist Karen Wooley. Read more in the following St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.

Area adults and children can find out if symptoms such as a chronic cough, wheezing and shortness of breath might be a sign of asthma through Washington University’s participation in the ninth annual Nationwide Asthma Screening Program.

Washington University in St. Louis has been chosen as a Program of Excellence in Nanotechnology (PEN) by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health. Karen Wooley, Ph.D., Washington University professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, is principal investigator of the Program, which NHLBI is funding at $12.5 million for five years.

MorrisThe American Academy of Neurology has awarded the 2005 Potamkin Prize for Research in Pick’s, Alzheimer’s and Related Diseases to John C. Morris, M.D., the Friedman Distinguished Professor of Neurology and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) at the School of Medicine.

Theodore J. Cicero, Ph.D., vice chancellor for research, plans to step down in June 2006 after 10 years of leading the University’s research enterprise. Before his appointment as the head of research for the University, Cicero served as vice chairman for research in the Department of Psychiatry. He will return to that position and devote more time to his own research.

An operating room trauma team is told their unconscious patient is a Jehovah’s Witness with religious objections to blood transfusions, but the patient has lost a lot of blood. Doctors are faced with ethical dilemmas such as this in hospital rooms and doctor offices around the nation every day. To help deal with these issues, the Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values at Washington University offers monthly surgical ethics sessions as a way to contemplate the emotional, humane and legal implications of medical decisions. Read more from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

A newly developed monoclonal antibody can cure mice infected with the West Nile virus, scientists at the School of Medicine report. If further studies confirm the effectiveness and safety of the antibody, it could become one of the first monoclonal antibodies used as a treatment for an infectious disease.