School of Medicine

Photo by Ray MarklinJan Brunstrom leads a national seminar that highlights a highly effective approach to managing cerebral palsy with sports and other activities.

While the persistence and drive of the cyclists in this month’s Tour de France is amazing and impressive, the University has its own world-class endurance athlete in Edwin D. Wolfgram, M.D. And he does more than just ride a bike. Last fall — less than a month before his 71st birthday — Wolfgram came in […]

Researchers performed an unprecedented and critical test: removing the rat’s original kidneys and placing new kidneys in position to take over.

As a child, Roberta Sengelmann, M.D., spent many weekends making rounds with her father, Robert P. Sengelmann, M.D., a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. Dressed in kid-size scrubs, she gently held the hands of patients who had sustained burns, trauma or undergone cosmetic surgery while her father changed their bandages and cared for them. “I’ve always […]

H. pylori bound to stomach tissueScientists working to develop a vaccine for the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, the primary cause of ulcers and a contributor to stomach cancers, have uncovered new intricacies in the way the bacterium sticks to the lining of the human stomach.

Scientists have known for years that eating less tends to make animals live longer, but no one is quite sure why. Several School of Medicine researchers studying the effects of caloric restriction on humans may help provide an answer to that question. This story was written by Tina Hesman and published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

MorrisStress appears to increase the severity of Alzheimer’s disease. That’s just one of more than 40 studies presented by Washington University researchers at the Alzheimer’s Association’s 9th International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders July 17-22 in Philadelphia. The University’s Alzheimer’s team is led by John C. Morris, M.D., principal investigator of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

BarrackRobert L. Barrack, M.D., has been named the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Distinguished Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the School of Medicine. He also will serve as chief of the Adult Reconstructive Surgery Service and chief of staff for orthopaedic surgery at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Researchers discovered activity in a part of the brain called the extrastriate body both when subjects viewed body parts and when they pointed to an object.Although we don’t often think about it, the brain is a very complicated place. Even the simple act of pointing at an object requires an intricate network of brain activity. Scientists traditionally thought this network included a one-way “information highway” between the brain’s visual system and its motor and sensory systems, but research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis now challenges that long-held theory. The study demonstrates that the brain’s visual system is responsible not only for seeing and perceiving objects outside the body, but also is involved when individuals sense and manipulate their own bodies.

PowellSimon Powell, M.B. B.S., Ph.D., a cancer physician-scientist from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, has been appointed head of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.