School of Medicine

The inaugural Health and Engineeering Careers Summer Camp took place in late July at West Side Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis. Numerous Washington University in St. Louis groups co-sponsored the event, which aimed to encourage underrepresented children to focus on science and math subjects. Here, 10-year-old Deja Stallworth proudly shows off the robot she made.

The Ebola virus, in the midst of its biggest outbreak on record, is a master at evading the body’s immune system. But researchers at the School of Medicine and elsewhere have learned one way the virus dodges the body’s antiviral defenses, providing important insight that could lead to new therapies.

New research in mice suggests that a class of drugs approved to treat leukemia and epilepsy also may be effective against kidney stones. Pictured is the surface of a kidney stone with calcium oxalate crystals.

Want to find out today’s specials at the medical school cafes? A website features daily menus for the Shell Café in the McDonnell Sciences Building, the Farrell Café in the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center, and Café Expresso at the Orthopaedic Center in Chesterfield.

An investigational drug studied in animals significantly reduced damage to heart muscle from a heart attack and minimized the risk of bleeding during follow-up treatments, according to a study by scientists at the School of Medicine. Pictured is senior author Dana Abendschein, PhD.

Jeff Peipert, MD, the Robert J. Terry Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, will receive the Alan F. Guttmacher Lectureship Award at the 2014 Reproductive Health conference of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals.

The population of bacteria in premature infants’ guts may depend more on the babies’ biological makeup and gestational age at birth than on environmental factors, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found. They discovered that bacterial communities assemble in a choreographed progression, with the pace of that assembly slowest in infants born most prematurely.

A new study suggests uric acid may play a role in causing metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors that increases the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. The work also demonstrates the importance of the intestine in removing uric acid from the body, opening the door to potential therapies for preventing or treating type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

Federal funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is set to expire Oct. 1, 2015, unless Congress intervenes — a move that is essential for millions of Amerian children, says a Washington University in St. Louis faculty expert on child well-being.

A method of growing human cells from tissue removed from a patient’s gastrointestinal (GI) tract eventually may help scientists develop tailor-made therapies for inflammatory bowel disease and other GI conditions. Pictured are Kelli L. VanDussen, PhD, and Matthew A. Ciorba, MD, members of a School of Medicine team that developed the method.