School of Medicine

The Vandeventer Avenue exit from eastbound Interstate 64/Highway 40 will reopen about noon Friday, Aug. 8.

Gabriel Bien-Willner, MD, PhD, instructor in the Department of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received a one-year $30,000 grant from the American Cancer Society for research titled “Identification of Genomic AML Fusion Onco-protein Targets with Calling Cards.”

New research at the School of Medicine helps explain why brain tumors occur more often in males and frequently are more harmful than similar tumors in females. Pictured is the study’s senior author, Joshua Rubin, MD, PhD.

Richard L. Wahl, MD, has been named the Elizabeth E. Mallinckrodt Professor and head of radiology at the School of Medicine. He also will serve as director of the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology.

Washington University researchers have found that courses intended to better prepare high school graduates for college also drive some students to drop out. They report that policies increasing the number of required math and science courses are linked to a higher dropout rate.

Children diagnosed with depression as preschoolers are likely to suffer from depression as school-age children and young adolescents, research shows. Depressed preschoolers were 2.5 times more likely to suffer from depression in later school years than children who were not depressed at very young ages, according to School of Medicine researchers.

Researchers led by Audrey Odom, MD, PhD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have uncovered a way the malaria parasite becomes resistant to an investigational drug. The discovery also is relevant for other infectious diseases including bacterial infections and tuberculosis.

L. Michael Brunt, newly named to lead the Section of Minimally Invasive Surgery at the School of Medicine, is a nationally recognized laparoscopic surgeon with expertise in abdominal, solid organ and biliary surgery.

Mary Corcoran has been named assistant dean for finance at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Her appointment, which marks her return to the university after six years at Stanford University, is effective Aug. 21.

More efforts should be directed at promoting interventions that have the potential to prevent multiple chronic diseases and extend healthy lifespans. School of Medicine and other researchers write in Nature that economic incentives in biomedical research and health care reward treating disease more than promoting good health.