School of Medicine

The Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis will host its fifth annual conference, titled “Rising to the Challenge: Public Health in the 21st Century,” from 12:30-5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 9, at the Eric P. Newman Education Center on the Medical Campus. The keynote speaker is James S. Marks, MD, senior vice president and director, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The rare disorder Wolfram syndrome is caused by mutations in a single gene, but its effects on the body are far reaching. Now, researchers report that they have identified a mechanism that affects both insulin-secreting cells and neurons. The finding will aid in the understanding of Wolfram syndrome and also may be important in the treatment of milder forms of diabetes and other disorders.

Lung cancer patients with a history of smoking have ten times more genetic mutations in their tumors than those with the disease who have never smoked, according to Richard K. Wilson, PhD, and his colleagues at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Nominations are now open for the 2012 Samuel R. Goldstein Leadership Awards in Medical Student Education. A $5,000 prize will be awarded to up to three WUSM faculty members who demonstrate leadership in medical student education.

A nationwide consortium of scientists has reported the first comprehensive genetic analysis of squamous cell carcinoma of the lung, a common type of lung cancer responsible for about 400,000 deaths each year. According to Ramaswamy Govindan, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, about 75 percent of the tumors studied have mutations that can be targeted with existing drugs.

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a protein essential to repairing the intestine’s inner lining.

Sleep disruptions may be among the earliest indicators of the start of Alzheimer’s disease, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report this week in Science Translational Medicine. David M. Holtzman, MD, the Andrew B. and Gretchen P. Jones Professor and head of the Department of Neurology, is the study’s author.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death among children ages 1-14 and will affect over 12,000 families in the United States this year alone. To increase awareness, September is designated Childhood Cancer Awareness Month with Wednesday, Sept. 12, pegged as Childhood Cancer Awareness Day. WUSTL researchers Kimberly J. Johnson, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School and Todd Druley , MD, PhD, pediatric oncologist and assistant professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine, are working to alleviate childhood cancer.

Children who use inhaled steroid drugs for asthma end up slightly shorter at their full adult height than children who don’t use the drugs, new results from a comprehensive asthma study show. The study’s senior author is Robert C. Strunk, MD, the Donald Strominger Professor of Pediatrics.

Barak A. Cohen, PhD, and Robi D. Mitra, PhD, have been named Alvin Goldfarb Distinguished Professors of Computational Biology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.