Medicine & Health

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.

Balancing independence and rules can be tough for parents with teenagers.Adolescence is often viewed as a time when children regularly push their parents’ patience to the limits. However, the trials and tribulations of a mother and father may be outweighed by the drastic life changes the teenagers themselves face, and parents should bear this in mind, says WUSM physician Katie Plax in the following St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.

Park hosts a party for cerebral palsy patients from around the world.T.S. Park, M.D., the Shi H. Hung Professor of Neurosurgery and neurosurgeon in chief at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, recently received the Korean Overseas Compatriots Award from the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) at a ceremony in Seoul. The network presents the national award to people in the fields of natural science, societal service, the arts and business who enhance the image and reputation of the country while living abroad

StraubeFor many people, their early twenties can be some of life’s most stressful. It’s an adjustment period of being on your own for the first time, for college graduations and the stress of finding and landing that first job. But for 24 year-old Melissa Straube of Highland, IL, that stress was compounded by words she didn’t expect to ever hear at her young age: “You have breast cancer.”

Jonathan Gitlin will serve as director of the new Division of Genetics and Genomic Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics.The separate worlds of patient care and genomic science will be brought together in the new Division of Genetics and Genomic Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at the School of Medicine. Plans for the division map out a model of individualized medical care in which physicians look to a patients’ genetic makeup to determine the most effective treatment.

Newborn mice and dogs with hemophilia A were restored to normal health through gene therapy developed by researchers at the School of Medicine. The technique introduced into the animals’ cells a gene that makes clotting factor VIII, a protein missing because of a genetic defect.