Newsroom Stories

Washington University in St. Louis has licensed to Castle Biosciences Inc. the exclusive use of a gene to detect the spread of cancer in melanoma patients. A link between the BAP1 gene and cancer metastasis was discovered by Washington University scientists J. William Harbour, MD, an ophthalmologic oncologist, and Anne Bowcock, PhD, a geneticist.

The timing, process and archaeology of the peopling of Europe by early modern humans have been actively debated for more than a century. Reassessment of the anatomy and dating of a fragmentary upper jaw with three teeth from Kent’s Cavern in southern England has shed new light on these issues. 

Susan Stepleton, PhD, former president and CEO of Parents as Teachers, recently joined the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis as director of its Policy Forum. A new initiative of the Brown School, the forum will host a series of programs and collaborations designed to enhance the quality of policy discussion and decision making in St. Louis, across the country, and around the world.

Workers unwrap the world’s first superconducting synchrocyclotron proton accelerator at the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The device is part of a proton therapy system being installed at Washington University Medical Center at the Kling Center for Proton Therapy,

David Rosen, JD, PhD, professor of anthropology and of law at Fairleigh Dickinson University and author of Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism, will present “The Moral Complexity of the Child Soldier ‘Problem’” for the Assembly Series Holocaust Memorial Lecture at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 9, in Graham Chapel. The lecture is free and open to the public.

A Nov. 8 panel discussion will focus on immigration challenges and potential solutions. Congressman Wm. Lacy Clay, D-Mo., will serve as keynote speaker during the forum. To foster dialogue, representatives of both political parties — as well as those who advocate for immigrants’ rights and those with experience in enforcement agencies — will participate.

Keith Hruska, MD, began his term as president of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR), Sept. 20, 2011, at the society’s 2011 Annual Meeting in San Diego. ASBMR is the world’s leading scientific organization for bone health research.

Sports updates for the week ending Oct. 30, 2011. Updates on football, volleyball, cross country, men’s and women’s soccer, swimming & diving, women’s golf and women’s basketball.

Distinguished Visiting Scholar Jock Soto leads a master class for advanced ballet students Oct. 26 in the Annelise Mertz Dance Studio in Mallinckrodt Student Center. Soto, an internationally acclaimed former principal dancer for the New York City Ballet, was in residence with the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences Oct. 23-30.

Freshman Arunita Kar and other WUSTL students played Halloween games with area children and took them trick-or-treating through the residential colleges this past Saturday. The annual Safe Trick-or-Treat provides a safe way to celebrate the holiday.