School of Medicine

Christopher A. Maher, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received a three-year, $450,000 Susan G. Komen Career Catalyst Award for research focused on understanding the role of long noncoding RNAs in estrogen-positive breast cancer treatment resistance. Maher’s lead mentor is Elaine R. Mardis, PhD, the Robert E. and Louise F. Dunn Distinguished Professor of Medicine.

Personalized melanoma vaccines can be used to marshal a powerful immune response against unique mutations in patients’ tumors, according to early data in a first-in-people clinical trial at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The research is a boost to cancer immunotherapy, a treatment strategy that unleashes the immune system to seek out and destroy cancer.

M. Gilbert Grand, MD, clinical professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, has been elected president of The Macula Society.

Louis W. Sullivan, MD, president emeritus of Morehouse School of Medicine, and former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), will speak about healthy equity and diversity in the health professions in two talks April 9 at Washington University.

Older mice genetically prone to bear offspring with heart defects can reduce this risk to that of younger mouse mothers with the same genetic defect through exercise alone, according to new research at the School of Medicine. The study, led by Patrick Y. Jay, MD, PhD, also suggests that the increased risk of congenital heart defects is tied to the age of the mother and not the age of her eggs.

Treva K. Rice, PhD, professor of biostatistics and of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received a four-year, $1.79 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “PRIDE Coordination Center.”

David C. Beebe, PhD, the Janet and Bernard Becker Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, died at his home in St. Louis on Friday, March 27, 2015, from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He was 70.

D.C. Rao, PhD, and Victor G. Davila-Roman, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, have received a four-year, $1.28 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a program titled “PRIDE Summer Institute in Cardiovascular Genetic Epidemiology.”

Six researchers at Washington University are being honored as outstanding scientists by the Academy of Science-St. Louis. University recipients are faculty members Ralph Quatrano, Jennifer K. Lodge, Samuel Achilefu, Charles M. Hohenberg, Gautam Dantas and Steven Teitelbaum (right), who received a lifetime achievement award.

Zeynep Yurtsever, a biochemistry graduate student, and Daniel Kober, a microbiology graduate student, both in the laboratory of Thomas Brett, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, have received two-year, $52,000 fellowships from the American Heart Association.