School of Medicine

Health-care specialists, including Sarah J. Gehlert, PhD, at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, are working to improve breast cancer care for African-American women living in North St. Louis City, where death rates from breast cancer are disproportionately high.

Trisha Lollo has been named vice president of cancer services for the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine.

Excess nutrients, such as fat and sugar, don’t just pack on the pounds but can push some cells in the body over the brink. Unable to tolerate this “toxic” environment, these cells commit suicide. Now, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered three unexpected players that help a cell overloaded with fat initiate its own demise.

Jennifer Wray Cole, MD, associate professor of anesthesiology, died Saturday, July 2, 2011, from injuries sustained in a bicycling accident. She was 52.

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that a protein made by a key Alzheimer’s gene slows the brain’s ability to get rid of amyloid beta, the main ingredient of the amyloid plaques that characterize the devastating illness.

School of Medicine scientists, including Richard Wilson, PhD, have completed the largest analysis to date of the genetic mutations underlying ovarian cancer.

Doctors at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are performing a new procedure to treat atrial fibrillation, a common irregular heartbeat. Available at only a handful of U.S. medical centers, this “hybrid” procedure combines minimally invasive surgical techniques with the latest advances in catheter ablation. The two-pronged approach gives doctors access to both the inside and outside of the heart at the same time, helping to more completely block the erratic electrical signals that cause atrial fibrillation.

Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience: A Primer, is the second book in 18 months from Charles F. Zorumski, MD, the Samuel B. Guze Professor and Head of Psychiatry, and Eugene H. Rubin, MD, PhD, professor of psychiatry. It is about how the brain works and what the growing understanding of neuroscience will mean to future diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric illnesses. 

Rather than count sheep, drink warm milk or listen to soothing music, many insomniacs probably wish for a switch they can flick to put themselves to sleep. Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, including Paul Shaw, PhD, have discovered such a switch in the brains of fruit flies.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has chosen Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to create an innovative, Internet-accessible database of millions of cancer images.