Newsroom Stories

On Thursday, August 20th, business, faith and health care leaders from across the region will come together at the Family Care Health Center in St. Louis to give their perspective on why federal health care reform is important for Missouri. The speakers, including health care providers, educators, business owners and faith leaders, will each speak for several minutes and then make themselves available to answer media questions following the presentations.

When estrogen-lowering drugs no longer control metastatic breast cancer, the opposite strategy might work. Raising estrogen levels benefited 30 percent of women whose metastatic breast cancer no longer responded to standard anti-estrogen treatment, according to research conducted at the School of Medicine and collaborating institutions.

Tumor growth can start from stem cells in the gut, say researchers studying fruit flies at the School of Medicine. They found that tumors can grow from adult stem cells that have lost a specific tumor-suppressor gene. The gene, Apc, has previously been implicated in human gastrointestinal cancers, including colon cancer.

For teens with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and their families, the transition to young adulthood may be especially difficult. To better understand this issue and how best to address it, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has awarded a five-year grant to Paul T. Shattuck, Ph.D., assistant professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. “This study will help us one day answer one of the most pressing issues in treating ASD,” said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. “Bridging the gap in health care, service use, and insurance coverage as these young people leave the school systems and enter adulthood may help prevent lapses in behavioral, social, and occupational skills that they and their families have worked so hard to achieve.”

Kouvelis Panos Kouvelis, a professor of operations and manufacturing management at the Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis, has been named to the new position of senior associate dean and director of executive programs. From St. Louis to Shanghai, Olin offers a wide variety of executive education programs including the Executive MBA degree, topic-focused seminars and custom corporate learning programs. Kouvelis brings a rich background of teaching, research and consulting to this new position which is part of a larger strategic plan for continued growth and innovation in executive education.

The Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values at Washington University will close, effective June 30, 2010. Many of the programs and work on ethics and human values will transition over the next year to the schools and other parts of the University. The decision comes in the wake of significant shortfalls in […]

More than 1,400 Washington University freshmen will move into the South 40 residence halls on Thursday, Aug. 20. With help from family, friends and upperclassmen, the students will be hauling everything from refrigerators and microwaves to carpets, bicycles and stereo systems into their new homes away from home. Trucks, vans, U-Hauls and station wagons will line the South 40 driveways.

Margaret Bush Wilson, WUSTL trustee emerita, prominent civil rights attorney in the 1960s and the first woman of color to chair the board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, died Tuesday, Aug. 11, after a short illness. She was 90.

One lane of Kingshighway Boulevard will be closed in each direction between Hospital Plaza and Oakland Avenue between 6:30 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. August 17-21.

A 10 million-square-foot cellular network will be built on the Washington University Medical Center campus this year as part of a new paging system. Sprint and Telecommunications Facilities Corp., the joint School of Medicine- and BJC HealthCare-operated company that supports telecommunications services, will build the network, estimated to be complete in early 2010. More than […]