Medicine & Health

A pediatric COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial is underway in St. Louis. Led by Washington University School of Medicine, about 140 area children will receive the two-shot Moderna vaccine or a placebo at St. Louis Children’s Hospital as part of a clinical trial involving about 100 medical institutions in the U.S. and Canada.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and The Neuro of McGill University have received a five-year grant expected to total $35.1 million for an extension of a study designed to develop biomarkers that indicate which people with REM sleep behavior disorder will go on to develop neurodegenerative diseases.

Four researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have been awarded “high-risk, high-reward” grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grant program aims to inspire scientific discovery by providing support for highly innovative research. The grant recipients are (from left) Linda J. Richards; Brian J. Laidlaw, Anthony W. Orvedahl and Leonid Shmuylovich.

Alex Holehouse, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at the School of Medicine, along with researchers at the University of California, Merced, and the University of Wyoming, received a four-year $992,485 grant from the National Science Foundation through the new “Integrative Research in Biology” program.

Robert Schmidt, MD, PhD, professor of pathology and immunology at Washington University School of Medicine, has received the Meritorious Contributions to Neuropathology Award from the American Association of Neuropathologists.

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded $4.3 million to renew the Washington University Center for Diabetes Translation Research. 

Neuroscientists in Arts & Sciences discovered that the daily release of hormones depends on the coordinated activity of clocks in two parts of the brain, a finding that could have implications for human diseases.

A new study from Washington University School of Medicine estimates that 78% to 92% of lung cancers in patients who have never smoked can be treated with precision drugs already approved by the Food and Drug Administration to target specific mutations in a patient’s tumor.

Washington University School of Medicine researchers have found a protein in the blood that could be measured to identify patients with limb-threatening ischemia — a condition in which heavy plaque formation causes a severe narrowing of the arteries — earlier in the disease process.

Mark V. Williams, MD, a respected leader in hospital medicine, performance improvement and health-care delivery, has been named director of the Division of Hospital Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine. His appointment takes effect Oct. 1.