School of Medicine

BJC HealthCare, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine are taking another step forward in the future development of the Washington University Medical Center. The vision is to transform the campus over the next 10 years through renovations and new construction.

A new marker of Alzheimer’s disease can predict how rapidly a patient’s memory and other mental abilities will decline after the disorder is diagnosed, Rawan Tarawneh, MD, found while a postdoctoral research associate at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The new data suggest that VILIP-1 potentially may be a better predictor of Alzheimer’s progression than other markers.

Life-threatening bacterial infections and brain tumors are just some of the serious health issues affecting children. Now, 12 Washington University School of Medicine research teams are preparing to ask – and answer – critical questions about these and other pediatric health problems with help from $3 million in new grants from the Children’s Discovery Institute, led by Mary Dinauer, MD, PhD.

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Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, including Jimmy Lin, PhD, are reaching out to patient advocacy groups and offering to decode the DNA of 99 patients with rare diseases to help find the genetic alterations responsible for their illnesses. The patients’ DNA will be sequenced by the university’s Genomics and Pathology Services (GPS) at no cost to patients or advocacy groups.

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is organizing a Missouri-wide Heart Failure Clinical Research Network, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Cardiology Chief Douglas L. Mann, MD, says this clinical research consortium is one of only nine regional centers across the country investigating innovative treatments for heart failure.

Not all viruses make us sick. But which ones are friends and which ones are foes? Researchers, led by Gregory Storch, MD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received a five-year, $3.3 million grant to study children with weakened immune systems to identify the viruses that make children sick.

In one way or another, nearly everyone at Washington University School of Medicine has heard of Bernard Becker, MD. Many use the beautiful Bernard Becker Medical Library or consult rare eye books there from the well-known Becker collection. In the Department of Ophthalmology, which Becker chaired for more than 35 years, faculty members know well his landmark research on glaucoma.

Registration is now open for the School of Medicine’s Mini-Medical School, now in its 14th year. These eight-week sessions offer the WUSTL community and the public an opportunity to learn about medicine and surgery from the School of Medicine faculty in a classroom environment.

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service invites student groups, centers, departments and schools, as well as individual members of the University community, to join an open discussion about plans for the 2012 election year.  The meeting will be held from 4-5:30 p.m. Monday, March 5, in the Multipurpose Room, lower level of Mallinckrodt Center on the Danforth Campus. ​