Medicine & Health

Fatty molecules may modulate the electrical characteristics of nerve and heart cells by regulating the properties of key cell pores, according to research conducted at the School of Medicine.

A new facility for obesity research and treatment will be established at the School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital thanks to a $5 million donation from the Dr. Robert C. Atkins Foundation. Read more from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Magnified nanoparticlesSpecially designed nanoparticles can reveal tiny cancerous tumors that are invisible to ordinary means of detection, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Researchers demonstrated that very small human melanoma tumors growing in mice — indiscernible from the surrounding tissue by direct MRI scan — could be “lit up” and easily located. Because the nanoparticles can be engineered to carry a variety of substances, they also may be able to deliver cancer-fighting drugs to malignant tumors.

Yellowing of the eye’s lens due to age-related nuclear sclerotic cataractResearchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis may be a step closer to understanding what causes cataracts, with the hope of one day being able to prevent them. In a new study published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology, the researchers report oxygen may be the culprit.

Drosophila melanoFor years, two schools of thought have dominated neurobiologists’ theories about how early nerve cells develop specialties that allow the assembly of a mature brain. One theory suggests master regulators trigger the development, while the other attributes the development to interactions between local factors. In a new study of developing fruit fly brain cells, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine and Harvard University showed that both models are valid.

The brighter signal over the transgenic heart indicates fat uptake and metabolism are greatly increased.Heart disease is the leading cause of death among the more than 13 million diabetics in the United States. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that in mice whose heart muscles take up high amounts of fat, the heart fills abnormally after each contraction, a condition that is consistent with the first stage of heart dysfunction in human diabetics.

Combinatorial chemistry provides researchers a vast library from which to choose.A researcher studying drug design for nerve damage therapies has gotten her answer to questions by following some old advice: she used the library. It’s not the kind of library her mother or teacher suggested, but a combinatorial chemistry library of many different protein sequences that some day might help her and her colleagues develop a successful timed drug delivery system.

TulvingEndel Tulving, Ph.D., the Clark Way Harrison Distinguished Visiting Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience in Arts & Sciences, is one of six scientists to be awarded the 2005 Gairdner International Award for groundbreaking work in medical research. Tulving, a visiting scholar at WUSTL since 1996, was selected for his “pioneering research in the understanding of human memory.”

Eliminating the need to ascertain eligibility.Years of double-digit increases in health care costs are devastating business, federal, state and family budgets. While the United States pays more per capita for health care than any other industrialized country, 44 million people lack assured care. “Most people overlook the most affordable way to achieve universal coverage – putting all of us under the Medicare umbrella,” says Merton C. Bernstein, a founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and the Coles Professor of Law Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis. “That single-payer system would reduce non-benefit spending by doctors, hospitals, clinics, laboratories and health care insurers by about $300 billion a year, providing funds to insure everyone without additional outlays.”

The first detailed studies of two of the largest human chromosomes have revealed enormous gene “deserts” lacking any protein-coding sequences and relics of the merger of two ape chromosomes to form a single human chromosome.