Medicine & Health

Rendering of the new CORTEX buildingEfforts to develop a significant biotechnology industry in St. Louis got a major boost with the groundbreaking for a new laboratory and office building that will provide space for growing companies. The new building at 4300 Forest Park Avenue in midtown St. Louis is being developed by CORTEX, the Center of Research, Technology & Entrepreneurial Exchange.

Jeffrey Petersen uses laser heat to treat varicose veins.Some 41 percent of American women may have varicose vein disease by the time they reach their 40s and 50s. Now Washington University in St. Louis dermatologic surgeons are among a growing group of physicians offering a procedure that uses heat to treat the problem.

Bobtail squidA molecule that triggers damaging changes in the lungs of children with whooping cough lets a bobtail squid living off the coast of Hawaii acquire the ability to glow, scientists have discovered.

Neuroscientists at the School of Medicine have received a five-year, $11.6 million grant to fund a Silvio O. Conte Center for the Neuroscience of Mental Disorders. Since 2001, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has funded a feasibility center at Washington University, but the new grant upgrades the center’s status, funding and number of research projects.

Daniel P. Kelly, M.D., director of the Center for Cardiovascular Research and co-director of the Cardiovascular Division at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been named the Alumni Endowed Professor of Cardiovascular Diseases.

An improved stem cell transplant regimen that is well-tolerated and has a high success rate has been developed by researchers at the School of Medicine. The procedure holds promise for treatment of blood and bone marrow disorders, immune dysfunction and certain metabolic disorders.

Salmonella entericaEvery year in developing nations, typhoid fever infects more than 16 million people and kills more than half a million. Researchers hoping to reduce this heavy toll have an important new tool: completed genomes for the two bacteria that are the leading causes of typhoid fever.

Alcohol and drug abuse remain the biggest problems among homeless individuals.The homeless population is changing. In the days of the Great Depression, many homeless people were victims of bad luck and a worse economy. But after studying St. Louis’ homeless population since the 1980’s, experts at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis say the problem has become more complex in recent times.

Red jungle fowlThe first detailed analysis of the chicken genome has identified a chicken counterpart to an important human immune system protein, revised scientists’ assessment of the chicken’s sense of smell, and suggested that the chicken, long used to study gene activity in the earliest stages of life, may provide a good model for studying changes in DNA linked to aging and death.

On their backs is the safest way for babies to sleep. Babies who never sleep on their stomachs don’t learn behaviors that may lessen their risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), researchers at the School of Medicine have found. Even so, the researchers caution that infants should always be placed on their backs to sleep.