School of Medicine

StraubeFor many people, their early twenties can be some of life’s most stressful. It’s an adjustment period of being on your own for the first time, for college graduations and the stress of finding and landing that first job. But for 24 year-old Melissa Straube of Highland, IL, that stress was compounded by words she didn’t expect to ever hear at her young age: “You have breast cancer.”

Jonathan Gitlin will serve as director of the new Division of Genetics and Genomic Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics.The separate worlds of patient care and genomic science will be brought together in the new Division of Genetics and Genomic Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at the School of Medicine. Plans for the division map out a model of individualized medical care in which physicians look to a patients’ genetic makeup to determine the most effective treatment.

Newborn mice and dogs with hemophilia A were restored to normal health through gene therapy developed by researchers at the School of Medicine. The technique introduced into the animals’ cells a gene that makes clotting factor VIII, a protein missing because of a genetic defect.

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Raw foods lead to low bone mass (week of April 6) • Genomic analysis for critically ill (week of April 13) • Oxygen causes cataracts (week of April 20) • Botox for foot ulcers (week of April 27)

Because nanoparticles can be engineered to carry a variety of substances, they also may be able to deliver cancer-fighting drugs.

University scientists have identified an important link between kidney damage and cardiac problems, creating new treatment possibilities.

But researchers have found that raw-food vegetarians have other biological markers indicating their bones may be healthy. More medical news

File PhotoT.S. Park, M.D., has earned international acclaim for his groundbreaking cerebral palsy research.He was given the Korean Overseas Compatriots Award from the Korean Broadcasting System at a ceremony in Seoul.

His groundbreaking research on the survival of cancer cells has helped scientists devise new ways to treat cancer.

Fatty molecules may modulate the electrical characteristics of nerve and heart cells by regulating the properties of key cell pores, according to research conducted at the School of Medicine.