School of Medicine

The Children’s Discovery Institute, which will begin research later this year, named an executive director and scientific director.

Patrick WinterIn laboratory tests, one very low dose of a drug was enough to have an effect on notoriously tenacious artery-clogging plaques. What kind of drug is that potent? It’s not so much the drug itself as how it was delivered. Fumagillin — a drug that can inhibit the growth of new blood vessels that feed atherosclerotic plaques — was sent directly to the base of plaques by microscopically small spheres called nanoparticles developed by School of Medicine researchers.

The MRI scans on the left show normal gray matter. The two on the right are abnormal.A Washington University pediatrician at St. Louis Children’s Hospital has found that performing MRI scans on pre-term infants’ brains assists dramatically in predicting the babies’ future developmental outcomes. Researchers studied 167 preterm infants in New Zealand and Australia and at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. The findings are a breakthrough because previous technology — cranial ultrasounds — did not show the abnormalities in the infants’ brains.

Asthmatx illustrationA bronchoscope delivers thermal energy to airways during a bronchial thermoplasty treatment.Researchers at the School of Medicine are seeking participants for the AIR2 (Asthma Interventional Research) international, multi-center clinical trial, which explores whether a new asthma treatment improves asthma care. The trial, the first test of the procedure in the U.S., focuses on a procedure called bronchial thermoplasty to treat asthma.

Abnormal blood vessels and hemorrhage under the retina in wet macular degenerationAlthough some recent studies have suggested that inflammation promotes retinal damage in age-related macular degeneration (AMD), new work from Washington University ophthalmology researchers has found that a particular type of inflammation, regulated by cells called macrophages, actually protects the eye from damage due to AMD.

Photo by Robert Boston Jean Audrain in the Department of Internal Medicine receives the Dean’s Distinguished Service Award from Larry J. Shapiro, M.D., executive vice chancellor and dean of the School of Medicine.

School of Medicine researchers have found a way to treat artery-clogging plaques with very low doses of medication. More medical news

Pancreatic tumors can hide from the body’s immune surveillance by surrounding themselves with cells that act like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.

Susan Dutcher, Ph.D., has been named interim head of the James S. McDonnell Department of Genetics at the School of Medicine.

Junior faculty initiating new cancer research projects are eligible for up to $20,000 in seed money.