School of Medicine

A team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has identified a pair of proteins excreted in the urine that could lead to earlier and more accurate diagnosis of kidney cancer. The research is the first to identify proteins in urine that appear to accurately reveal the presence of about 90 percent of all kidney cancers. 

Michael M. Awad, MD, Joan Rosenbaum, MD, and Gladys Tse, MD, have been chosen for the 2010-12 Carol B. and Jerome T. Loeb Teaching Fellowships at the School of Medicine.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received a five-year, $3.8 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to renew a center that helps researchers collect and use data on the brain and central nervous system.

I Jerome Flance, an emeritus clinical professor of medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine who spearheaded the University’s development of the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood, died Friday (April 2, 2010) of infirmities of age at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. He was 98 and lived in Creve Coeur.

Parents, schools and communities need to be involved in combating the epidemic of childhood obesity, Debra Haire-Joshu, PhD, says.

Evan D. Kharasch, MD, PhD, the Russell D. and Mary B. Shelden Professor of Anesthesiology and professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics, has been appointed vice chancellor for research at Washington University in St. Louis, effective April 5. He had served as interim vice chancellor since July 2009. As the chief officer responsible for the university’s research mission, he will oversee an enterprise that generates more than $500 million annually for sponsored research from a wide array of funding sources.

A drug already prescribed to shrink benign, enlarged prostates has been shown to reduce the risk of a prostate cancer diagnosis by 23 percent in men with an increased risk of the disease, a large international trial has found. Results are reported April 1 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Nearly all animals make sounds instinctively, but baby songbirds learn to sing in virtually the same way human infants learn to speak: by imitating a parent. Now, an international team of scientists, led by the School of Medicine, has decoded the genome of a songbird — the Australian zebra finch — to reveal intriguing clues about the genetic basis and evolution of vocal learning. 

There will be a year of festivities as the Department of Pediatrics celebrates its centennial April 1 to honor the milestones. Currently ranked eighth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, the Department of Pediatrics has become a world leader in pediatric patient care, teaching and research with its many groundbreaking discoveries and for its excellence in all divisions.

Clinicians may be able to better predict the effects of strokes and other brain injuries by adapting a scanning approach originally developed for the study of brain organization, neurologists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found.