School of Medicine

Gravenhorst’s new ear is repositioned during an office visit to the maxillofacial prosthetics lab.Like any 17-year-old, Emily Gravenhorst follows a routine to get ready for a day of high school. She showers, styles her hair, puts on her make-up and eats breakfast. And just before she leaves the house, she puts on her right ear. That ear was created in the maxillofacial prosthetics laboratory at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where one dental specialist and one technician help patients fit back into society after disfigurement due to accident or disease.

YokoyamaA researcher with Hawaiian roots is among the 72 members elected to the National Academy of Sciences this year. Selection for the academy is a prestigious honor that recognizes distinguished and continuing achievement in research and is one of the highest marks of distinction for an American scientist.

Three Washington University scientists are among the 72 members and 18 foreign associates elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Election to the academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a U.S. scientist or engineer.

There is renewed hope for treatment of a rare genetic condition that causes rapidly accelerated aging and leads to an average life expectancy of 13 years. Scientists studying the genes of two infants who died of mysterious illnesses found the infants had mutations in LMNA, the same gene altered in patients with the premature aging condition progeria. But the infants’ unusual mutations caused them to make many more bad copies of the gene’s primary protein, lamin A, than progeria patients.

The Center for Aging’s seventh annual Friedman Conference will be held May 8 at the Eric P. Newman Education Center.

A Physical Therapy researcher is seeking those with low-back pain to test two conservative treatment programs that include education, training in everyday activities and exercise.

Photo by Robert BostonThree-year-old Reuven Kirshner plays pattycake with his nurse, Sarah Parks, after he had a bone from his shin transplanted into his arm, which was affected by a rare bone cancer.

Metabolic syndrome among the HIV-infected population is about 26 percent, the same as in those not infected with the virus, a new study shows.

Men and women at risk for alcohol dependence are more likely to choose a mate who also is at risk, say investigators at the School of Medicine. That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that both spouses will end up as problem drinkers.

David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoKevin Moeller’s group is pioneering new methods for building libraries of small molecules on addressable electrode arrays.A chemist at Washington University in St. Louis is making molecules the new-fashioned way — selectively harnessing thousands of minuscule electrodes on a tiny computer chip that do chemical reactions and yield molecules that bind to receptor sites. Kevin Moeller, Ph.D., Washington University professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, is doing this so that the electrodes on the chip can be used to monitor the biological behavior of up to 12,000 molecules at the same time.