School of Medicine

Nanoparticles can be loaded with a variety of things, including imaging agents and drugs.Using nanoparticles, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis hope to send imaging agents and medications directly to specific cells. The research team recently received a three-year contract from the National Cancer Institute to explore nanoparticle technology for cancer detection and treatment. They also have reported success at detecting very early stages of heart disease. The researchers load specific drugs or imaging agents onto nanoparticles. Then, by injecting those packed particles into a patient, they are able to use MRI scans to locate very tiny blood vessels that tend to grow around plaques in cardiac arteries and near tumor cells at the earliest stages of cancer.

The enlarged and distended lungs of an emphysema patient before surgery.Known as lung-volume reduction surgery, the procedure improves overall health and quality of life for people with end-stage emphysema. Now lung surgeons at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that the positive effects last for as long as five years in more than half of all patients. It is not a cure for emphysema, but studies suggest that the surgery can increase breathing capacity by more than 50 percent. The procedure was developed a decade ago at Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital. In select patients with disease that is localized to certain areas of the lung, it is possible to remove the most diseased portions of lung tissue and provide more room for the lung to expand inside the chest cavity.

While most of the world works to contain the spread of the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the Genome Sequencing Center (GSC) in the School of Medicine has become part of the international effort to understand the microbe. Researchers at the GSC were called upon to sequence the new virus and poorly understood human pathogen. They completed the task in what is possibly record time — less than a week.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and other members of the International Human Genome Consortium announced the successful completion of the Human Genome Project more than two years ahead of schedule. By completing the Human Genome Project, researchers believe they are launching a new age of discovery that will transform human health. Knowing the order of the genetic building blocks — commonly abbreviated A, T, C and G (adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine) — should allow scientists to learn more about human development and disorders such as heart disease, psychiatric illness and cancer. Already the genome sequencing effort has helped spur discoveries about breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and sickle cell disease.

Wild African baboons at rest.Investigators from several groups, including Washington University in St. Louis, have found that when it comes to risk of obesity, the food you eat may be less important than the exercise you get. The researchers studied the eating and exercise patterns of two groups of wild baboons in East Africa. Like most primates, one group has to wander and forage for food. The other group lives near a tourist lodge in Kenya; they get lots of their food from the garbage dump. Typically, baboons spend the majority of their day walking from place to place finding food. But the so-called “couch baboons” spent most of their day waiting for food to arrive at the dump and then eating that food. Some of those baboons also became obese and resistant to insulin, just like humans who eat too much and exercise too little.

Surgeons use a Sextant to help precisely implant screws and rods in a minimally invasive way.Back surgery — typically an intimidating prospect fraught with tales of post-operative pain — is being performed with less pain, less blood loss and fewer days recovering in the hospital, thanks to a combination of minimally invasive surgical techniques. According to Neill M. Wright, M.D., assistant professor of neurological surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the School of Medicine is one of the few centers in the country using this combination of techniques, but promising results may inspire others to follow suit. Spine surgeons have been trying to limit post-operative pain from back surgery using the same ideas that made gallbladder and knee surgeries less invasive.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have completed sequencing the genome of Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, one of the most prevalent bacteria that live in the human intestine. The results appear in the March 28 issue of the journal Science.

Because obesity is a chronic illness, long-term treatment is required to help obese patients make the lifestyle changes to lose weight and keep it off.Almost two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese, and that figure is growing — both in size and number. People with medically significant obesity have a body weight that is more than 20 percent above normal. The reason it is called medically significant obesity is that weighing that much puts people at risk for heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure and cancer. It also decreases quality of life. Researchers at Washington University’s Weight Management Center help patients lose weight safely and reduce long-term risks of obesity-related diseases by taking a long-term approach. Because obesity is a chronic disease, they believe short-term therapy will not be effective. Just as physicians would not want to treat a diabetic with insulin for four months and then stop the therapy, they say that beating obesity often requires continual care.

Researchers are looking for both healthy and hypertensive volunteers above age 21 as part of a four-year, $2.8 million grant.

Photo by Bob BostonThe exhibit Influence 150: 150 Years of Shaping a City, a Nation, the World is at the Bernard Becker Medical Library and will be on display through May.