School of Medicine

An international team of researchers has partially untangled the genetic details of a mysterious disorder that formerly caused seizures and death in infant boys within a month of birth.

A study of patients who have difficulty paying attention to the left side of their environment has provided some of the first direct evidence that brain injury can cause detrimental functional changes in brain regions far from the site of the actual injury.

Designed to bring together great scientific minds in a comfortable, productive atmosphere, the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center became the new focal point at the School of Medicine in August. Read more about the $35 million state-of-the-art facility in the following St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.

The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the School of Medicine is starting its first federally-funded training program to provide support for postdoctoral fellows in reproductive sciences.

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Sunlight is good for teeth (week of Oct. 5) • Countdown to drug dependency (week of Oct. 12) • Cell phones don’t stress human cells (week of Oct. 19) • Beta-blocker use depends on genes (week of Oct. 26)

Enlisted to help fight viral infections, immune cells called macrophages consume virus-infected cells to stop the spread of the disease in the body. Now researchers at the School of Medicine have uncovered how macrophages keep from succumbing to the infection themselves.

Physicians from 33 sites in the United States and Canada participated in the Digital Mammographic Imaging Screening Trial.

Milbrandt has been involved in studies over the past 15 years that were peripherally related to motor neuron disease or ALS.

Photo by David Kilper / WUSTL PhotoThoroughman (background) and Taylor tracked the moves that people make.Practice makes perfect when people learn behaviors, from baseball pitching to chess playing to public speaking. Biomedical engineers at Washington University in St. Louis have now identified how people use individual experiences to improve performance.

Photo by David Kilper / WUSTL PhotoScott (left) and Elbert looking for sticky proteins.Biomedical engineers at Washington University in St. Louis have found a new role for the blood protein serum amyloid P in the body’s response to medical materials, which may help to explain a variety of problems associated with heart-lung bypass, hemodialysis and the use of artificial vascular grafts. Donald Elbert, Ph.D., Washington University assistant professor of biomedical engineering, used advanced protein separations and mass spectrometry to track the proteins on the surfaces of various polymers used in medical devices. The analysis techniques, collectively called ‘proteomics,’ are most often used to study protein expression in cells.