School of Medicine

Scientists have identified a naturally occurring enzyme that can break down a key component of the brain plaques characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease. The finding may provide researchers with new opportunities to understand what goes wrong in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients and could one day help them seek new therapies.

The School of Medicine, a research leader in Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, stroke and schizophrenia, will be among the first recipients of a major new National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to facilitate study of nervous system disorders. The NIH Blueprint for the Neurosciences Grant will provide $8 million to the University over five years.

FerkolThomas Ferkol, M.D., has been named director of the Division of Allergy and Pulmonary Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Ferkol, associate professor of pediatrics and of cell biology and physiology, will continue as director of the Pediatric Pulmonology Fellowship Program and as director of the Cystic Fibrosis Center.

School of Medicine pediatric ophthalmologists surgically correct vision on some of the most profoundly impaired children.

Photo by Robert BostonJennifer Manly, John Morris, M.D., and Norman Seay at the first annual Norman R. Seay Lecture Sept. 19.

Election to the academy is among the highest honors U.S. medical scientists can receive.

C-TRAIN to open Oct. 20 in the Center of Research Translation and Entrepreneurial Exchange (CORTEX) Building.

School of Medicine researchers studied healing in the shoulders of 72 rats following rotator cuff surgery.

DNA ligase encircles the DNA double helix.Scientists investigating an important DNA-repair enzyme now have a better picture of the final steps of a process that glues together, or ligates, the ends of DNA strands to restore the double helix. The enzyme, DNA ligase, repairs the millions of DNA breaks generated during the normal course of a cell’s life.

Van GelderRussell N. Van Gelder, M.D., Ph.D., is the new Bernard Becker Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the School of Medicine. Larry J. Shapiro, M.D., executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, announced the appointment.