School of Medicine

The McDonnell International Scholars Academy at Washington University in St. Louis welcomed 12 new talented graduate and professional students for the 2011-12 academic year. The new scholars are graduates of one of 27 premier universities from around the world partnered with WUSTL in the McDonnell International Scholars Academy.

After defeating an infection, the immune system creates a memory of the attacker to make it easier to eliminate in the future. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered an important component of the immune system’s strategy for preserving such immunological memories.

Thomas W. Ferkol Jr., MD, has been named the first Alexis Hartmann, MD, Professor in Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Why do we like fatty foods so much? We can blame our taste buds. In the first study to identify a human receptor that can taste fat, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report that our tongues recognize and have an affinity for fat and that variations in a gene can make people more or less sensitive to the taste of fat in foods.

The chemotherapy drugs required to push a common form of adult leukemia into remission may contribute to DNA damage that can lead to a relapse of the disease in some patients, findings of a new study suggest.

New findings from the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital – Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project have helped identify the mechanism that makes the childhood eye tumor retinoblastoma so aggressive.

Matthew MacEwan, an MD-PhD student at Washington University in St. Louis, recently started his own nanotechnology company, NanoMed LLC, aimed at revolutionizing the surgical mesh widely used in operating rooms worldwide.

Patients who die from sepsis are likely to have had suppressed immune systems that left them unable to fight infections, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown. The findings suggest that therapies to rev up the immune response may help save the lives of some patients with the disorder.

When it comes to communication in the brain, more is usually better. But now scientists, including Maurizio Corbetta, MD, have linked increased communication in a network of brain regions to more severe mental impairment in patients with early-stage multiple sclerosis (MS).

A new study shows that annual prostate cancer screening does not reduce deaths from the disease, even among men in their 50s and 60s and those with underlying health conditions. The study was published online Jan. 6 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.