Newsroom Stories

Three hundred and eighty physicians at Washington University in St. Louis have been named to the Best Doctors In America for 2012. One of every three physicians in St. Louis is a Washington University physician.

Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis will be working on low-cost solar cells and systems that integrate solar cells with batteries as part of $125 million U.S.-India Initiative for Clean Energy announced this year. The technology is designed to help India leapfrog energy technologies, moving directly to low-emission electricity generation and bypassing as much as possible fossil-fuel electrical generation.

Hundreds of mutations exist in leukemia cells at the time of diagnosis but nearly all occur randomly as a part of normal aging and are not related to cancer, new research at Washington University School of Medicine shows.

Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis who were decoding the activity of populations of neurons in the motor cortex discovered that they could tell how a monkey was planning to approach a reaching task. By chance the two monkeys chosen for the study had completely different cognitive styles. One was a hyperactive type, who kept jumping the gun, and the other was a smooth operator, who waited for the entire setup to be revealed before planning his next move. The difference is clearly visible in their decoded brain activity, allowing the scientists, in effect, to read their minds.

Gerald Andriole, MD, chief of urologic surgery at the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is a co-author of new research showing that many men with prostate cancer do not need immediate treatment, especially if they have low PSA scores or low-risk tumors that are unlikely to grow and spread.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded more than $2 million to a team of scientists from Washington University in St. Louis and InvivoSciences, a biotechnology startup with WUSTL roots, to construct artificial tissue models that will allow the rapid testing of new drugs for heart failure.

A unique summer research program is providing 11 students who attend Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., with invaluable experience at the School of Medicine. The program offers the Meharry students the opportunity to conduct cutting-edge research with the School of Medicine’s renowned physicians and scientists.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation has created the Alan Permutt Career Development Award in honor of the late M. Alan Permutt, MD, who died June 10, 2012.

Vikas Dharnidharka, MD, an award-winning specialist in pediatric kidney disease and transplantation, has been named director of the Division of Nephrology in the Department of Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Cardiologists, including Samuel A. Wickline, MD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a noninvasive imaging technique that may help determine whether children who have had heart transplants are showing early signs of rejection. The technique could reduce the need for these patients to undergo invasive imaging tests every one to two years.