School of Medicine

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

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.

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.

Moving new technology from the laboratory to patients’ bedsides takes more than just a clever idea. It often requires the combined expertise of university researchers who develop the technology and industry scientists who understand what it takes to get innovations to the marketplace. That’s exactly what two Washington University scientists had in mind when they created a consortium of experts from academia and industry.