School of Medicine

Marilyn Siegel, MD, a professor of radiology and of pediatrics, loves solving the puzzles her field presents and the opportunities it has given her. But most of all, she loves helping patients.

A new study shows that quitting smoking after a heart attack has immediate benefits, including less chest pain, better quality of daily life and improved mental health. Many of these improvements became apparent as little as one month after quitting and are more pronounced after one year, according to the research led by Sharon Cresci, MD, at the School of Medicine.

First-year medical student Anna Arnaud writes about what it means to receive a white coat, which incoming School of Medicine students received at a ceremony Friday, Aug. 14, to initiate the transition from students of science to practitioners of medicine.

First-year students at the School of Medicine participated Friday, Aug. 14, in the traditional White Coat Ceremony — a rite of passage in which future doctors are welcomed to the medical school and the medical profession. The class also recited an oath promising honesty and integrity.

The Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital Pulmonary Hypertension Center, under the direction of Murali Chakinala, MD, associate professor of medicine, has received accreditation from the Pulmonary Hypertension Association as a Center for Comprehensive Care, the association’s highest level achievable.

St. Louis College of Pharmacy students began using the new staff garage on Duncan Avenue Monday, Aug. 17, and Goldfarb School of Nursing at Barnes-Jewish College students are scheduled to begin using it Aug. 26. As construction around the garage area finishes, staff will be able to begin parking there.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received a $7 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation aimed at eliminating river blindness and elephantiasis, two neglected tropical diseases that annually sicken millions.

A team of Washington University students on the Medical Campus recently won top honors in the Neuro Startup Challenge, a biotech startup competition designed to commercialize promising brain-related discoveries of scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).The team developed a business plan to commercialize a test for patients with multiple sclerosis.

Erika Pearce, PhD, associate professor of pathology and immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received a four-year, $1.26 million grant from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and, separately, a $500,000 grant for metabolism research.

Scientists have identified a pathway that leads to the formation of atypical blood vessels that can cause blindness in people with age-related macular degeneration. The research, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, sheds light on one of the leading causes of blindness in industrialized countries and offers potential targets for treating the disease.