School of Medicine

Nancy Morrow-Howell, PhD, the Ralph and Muriel Pumphrey Professor of Social Work at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, is the new director of the Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging effective Jan. 1, announced Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. Morrow-Howell succeeds John C. Morris, MD, the Harvey A. and Dorismae Hacker Friedman Distinguished Professor of Neurology and director of the Alzheimer Disease Research Center, the Memory and Aging Project and the Memory Diagnostic Center at WUSTL. 

For the first time, Anesthesiology, the premier journal in the field of anesthesiology, focuses entirely on the physicians, scientists and research conducted in a single, U.S. institution. The December issue of the journal features the work of the Department of Anesthesiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, including Michael Holtzman, MD, have received an $8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the role of the barrier functions of the skin, gut, and airway in asthma and allergic diseases. Understanding the role of the epithelial cells in these tissues may help prevent and treat respiratory illnesses in the future, the researchers say.

The following are among the new faculty members at Washington University: Joseph Cullen, PhD; Amr Farahat, PhD; Exequiel Hernández, PhD; Baojun Jiang, PhD; Ping C. Lieser, PhD; Asaf Manela, PhD; Matthew Ringgenberg, PhD; and Adina Sterling, PhD. Others will be introduced periodically.

A drug commonly used to treat seizures appears to make eye tumors less likely to grow if they spread to other parts of the body, according to new research at the School of Medicine. Their findings are available online in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

New research by Richard Grucza, PhD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that a legal drinking age of less than 21 is linked to a higher risk of homicides and suicides among adult women.

Studying family members suspected of having Alzheimer’s disease, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a gene that causes a rare disorder highlighted by memory loss and motor impairments. The condition is known as Kufs disease, but scientists say the discovery paves the way to development of a genetic test for Kufs and to therapies to treat dementia, which is a hallmark of Kufs and of other neurodegenerative conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease. 

Pediatricians often treat young children who have frequent bouts of wheezing with a daily dose of an inhaled steroid to keep asthma symptoms at bay. But results of a recent study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine, including Leonard B. Bacharier, MD, are likely to change that.

Parinaz Massoumzadeh, PhD, staff scientist in the Department of Radiology, was one of eight American women chosen to participate in a U.S.-Brazil exchange program to recruit, retain and advance women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, including Stuart A. Kornfeld, MD, have obtained new evidence that at least some persistent stuttering is caused by mutations in a gene governing not speech, but a metabolic pathway involved in recycling old cell parts. Beyond a simple association, the study provides the first evidence that mutations affecting cellular recycling centers called lysosomes actually play a role in causing some people to stutter.