School of Medicine

Washington University has awarded four Bear Cub Fund grants totaling $150,000 to support innovative research projects that could be attractive for licensing by commercial entities or serve as the foundation for a start-up company.

A new program in the Barnes-Jewish Hospital Obstetrics Clinic is helping to prevent lead poisoning among children in the city of St. Louis.

Changing the sugars attached to a hormone produced in the pituitary gland increased fertility levels in mice nearly 50 percent, School of Medicine research has found.

Photo by Robert BostonJulie Gerberding, M.D., director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spoke to School of Medicine graduates at Commencement May 16, 2008, at America’s Center.

Young women who were physically active had a 23 percent lower risk of breast cancer before menopause, new research from the School of Medicine shows.

GoateInvestigators at the School of Medicine have identified a genetic variation associated with an earlier age of onset in Alzheimer’s disease. Unlike genetic mutations previously linked to rare, inherited forms of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease — which can strike people as young as their 30s or 40s — these variants influence an earlier presentation of symptoms in people affected by the more common, late-onset form of the disease.

Jeffrey Bradley, associate professor of radiation oncology, has been named the first director of the Kling Center for Proton Therapy, a facility for treating cancer patients with a new, highly precise form of radiation therapy. The center is scheduled to open in summer 2009 at the Siteman Cancer Center at the School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Women born after 1944 began drinking alcohol at younger ages than their elders, and that appears to have put them at greater risk for alcoholism, according to researchers at the School of Medicine. On average, women born before 1944 began drinking at age 20. Those born after that started drinking alcohol at age 17, and they had a 50 to 80 percent greater risk for alcohol dependence, the researchers found.

StantonRichard Stanton has been named associate vice chancellor and associate dean for administration and finance at the School of Medicine. Stanton’s appointment, effective July 1, 2008, was announced by Larry J. Shapiro, M.D., executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are the first to identify two proteins responsible for mechanosensitive ion channel activities in plant roots. Scientists have long known that plant cells respond to physical forces. Until now, however, the proteins controlling the ion channel response remained a mystery.