Medicine & Health

Janet S. Lee, MD, a highly regarded physician-scientist in pulmonary and critical care medicine, has been chosen to lead the Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the School of Medicine. Her appointment is effective Jan. 3.

Washington University medical experts share how students, faculty and staff can stay healthy this holiday season. They note that masks not only slow the spread of COVID-19, but also can stop dangerous viruses such as the flu and RSV, which are currently raging throughout the St. Louis region. 

School of Medicine physician-scientists have received an NIH grant to establish a Pediatric Center of Excellence in Nephrology. The researchers aim to create high-definition molecular reference maps showing genetic details of normal and diseased kidneys during various stages of childhood growth and development.

School of Medicine researchers discovered that the three main kinds of soil fungi that cause lung infections have all expanded their ranges in recent decades. Reliance on outdated maps could be causing delayed or missed diagnoses.

School of Medicine scientists have received a five-year $11.7 million grant to study human genes and nerve cells to better understand how cells transmit pain and to find new ways to treat it.

A study from Washington University School of Medicine shows that as patients age, Huntington’s disease impairs autophagy, which eliminates waste from cells.

Researchers at the School of Medicine are working toward a treatment for neurodegenerative diseases, among them peripheral neuropathies and Parkinson’s disease, that targets SARM1, a key molecule in the death of axons, the wiring of the nervous system.

Faculty members Song Hu and Yong Wang are teaming up to find quantitative biomarkers for clinical pain management.

Abhinav Jha and a group of interdisciplinary collaborators have developed a method to measure dopamine transporter, a protein related to movement and Parkinson’s disease.

Washington University School of Medicine faculty members Opeolu M. Adeoye, MD, Farshid Guilak, PhD, David H. Gutmann, MD, PhD, and Jonathan Kipnis, PhD, have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, a part of the National Academy of Sciences. Membership is considered one of the highest honors in the health and medicine fields.