Understanding the brain is key to addressing devastating neurological and psychiatric diseases that affect mankind. To accelerate progress in this area, WashU Medicine — already one of the world’s premier institutions in neuroscience research — is deepening its investment. A new era of progress Navigate the neurosciences Nurturing neuroscience Read more.
University launches new era of progress in neuroscience Understanding the brain and nervous system is one of the most pressing challenges in medicine. To meet this challenge, WashU Medicine has built and is opening the Neuroscience Research Building, a 609,000-square-foot facility expected to be among the nation’s premier neuroscience research hubs. Read more.
Fifteen years ago, Lilianna “Lila” Solnica-Krezel, PhD, interviewed to lead a new Department of Developmental Biology, a reinvention of the WUSM Department of Pharmacology. She remembers thinking, on her flight home, that she had met 30 leaders and only two were women. But clearly the school was poised for change, and, in 2010, she made history, becoming […]
Alzheimer’s disease is like two deaths, said Stephanie Griffin, whose father died of the brain disease in 2015. “It’s horrific,” she said. “First, you watch them lose the ability to talk, to think, to do any of the things they used to do. And then, to see them pass because of it? It’s just … […]
Phantom voices instructed a 13-year-old girl to store knives in her bed, taunted her with vulgarities and convinced her that she could see god, even be a god. For months, the voices destroyed peace in the family’s home. “I felt helpless because my daughter’s inner demons wouldn’t go away,” said the teenager’s mother, Takisha, recalling […]
When you live with dementia, your sleep breaks apart, the nights a strobe-lit blur, the grayed days lost to catnaps. Physicians — and families — have known this for years. But what no one realized, until landmark research at Washington University in 2009 set a series of studies in motion, was that fragmented sleep might […]
When you seek medical care, you expect a diagnosis. You may need to answer a lot of questions and undergo tests, but usually doctors can figure out the root of the problem. This is not the case for a surprisingly large group of patients. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), 25 million to […]
Moving innovations out of the so-called ivory tower and into the public domain holds enormous power to treat disease and improve quality of life. But while academic researchers and physicians may imagine promising clinical solutions, some are unprepared to navigate commercialization: pitching themselves, attracting investors, wrangling with intellectual property law, designing rigorous proof-of-concept studies, locating […]
During his freshman year of college, Brian Phillips came home one day to find his parents unexpectedly already there. With tears in his eyes, his dad, a former Marine, put his hand on his son’s shoulder and asked him to sit down. “I’ll never forget it,” Phillips said. “I’d never seen my dad cry before.” […]
Compelled by the potential to improve the lives of vulnerable children, emeritus trustee Walter Metcalfe and his wife, Cynthia, have committed nearly $4 million through outright and estate gifts to support the work of Joan L. Luby, MD, a highly regarded child psychiatrist. Luby and her colleagues have linked adversity, including poverty and neglect in the […]
Washington University is working with unparalleled research capabilities to make personalized medicine a reality. The medical school is pioneering individualized treatment approaches in obesity, diabetes, breast cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Watch the video spotlight.
When Greg Bowman was in second grade, he began to have trouble reading the board in his classroom. Playing goalie for his soccer team also became difficult. Over the following year, he lost most of his central vision due to an inherited genetic disorder, a form of juvenile macular degeneration. “It gradually dawned on me […]
Shortly before 2 p.m. on a Monday, a group of writers, doctors and marketing gurus has convened in a North Building conference room to discuss putting on a play. One of the production’s star performers arrives. Eric C. Leuthardt, MD, sits down and guides the group through details about the play, a four-part theatrical production […]
COX’S BAZAR DISTRICT, Bangladesh — From high atop barren hills and the crests of skinny, rutted roads, the views of the vast camps that serve as makeshift homes to more than 900,000 Rohingya refugees are staggering. In every direction, stretches of hastily built, criss-crossed bamboo walls and roofs hold in place dirty orange, blue, black […]