School of Medicine

New research suggests that widely used statin therapy provides the most benefit to patients with the highest genetic risk of heart attack. Using a relatively straightforward genetic analysis, the researchers, including Nathan O. Stitziel, MD, PhD, assessed heart attack risk independently of the traditional risk factors.

Carey-Ann Burnham, PhD, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received a one-year, $58,750 grant from The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital and the Washington University Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences for research titled “Sequencing and Culture-Based Evaluation of Skin Flora Following Decolonization.”

Stephen Oh, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received a Doris Duke Clinical Scientist Development Award and a Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award, both totaling $486,000, for research titled “Targeting Aberrant Signaling Pathways in Myeloproliferative Neoplasms.”

Melissa Hopkins, assistant vice chancellor and assistant dean of facilities operations at the School of Medicine, excels at multi-tasking. At work, she oversees facilities engineering, design and construction, support services, business operations and protective services. At home, she and her husband have three children with plans to adopt three more. Further, she also shares custody of three children and has three adult sons from a previous marriage.

Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, director of the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology, has been awarded the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine.

Highlighting a potential target in the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) and Alzheimer’s disease, new research suggests that triggering a protein found on the surface of brain cells may help slow the progression of these and other neurological diseases.

Mark J. Manary, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been awarded one of three research grants from the Sackler Institute for Nutrition Science at the New York Academy of Sciences.

Marcus E. Raichle, MD, has been named an inaugural Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the School of Medicine. A professor of radiology, psychology, biomedical engineering, neurobiology and neurology, his many honors include the 2014 Kavli Prize for Neuroscience.

Guided by the immune system, researchers have identified types of gut bacteria in both healthy and undernourished children in Malawi that are linked to nutritional health and that have diagnostic and therapeutic implications for childhood undernutrition.

Andrey Shaw, MD, the Emil R. Unanue Professor of Immunobiology in the Department of Pathology and Immunology and director of the Division of Immunobiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received a one-year, $84,583 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Confluence Life Sciences Inc. for research titled “Development of TAK1 Inhibitors to Treat Pancreatic Cancer.”