Saligrama part of team that received Wellcome Leap funding (Links to an external site)

Saligrama

Naresha Saligrama, an assistant professor of neurology and of pathology and immunology at the School of Medicine, is part of a team led by Lisa Wagar, of the University of California, Irvine, that has received multiyear, multi-million-dollar funding from Wellcome Leap to use human tonsil organoids to study immune responses. 

ICTS Announces 2022-2023 CTRFP Awardees (Links to an external site)

(1st row, left to right) Jennifer Alexander-Brett, MD, PhD; Jane Armer, PhD, RN, FAAN; Thomas J. Baranski, MD, PhD; Alex Rene Carter, MD, PhD; Jen Jen Chang, PhD, MPH (2nd row, left to right) Vincenza Cifarelli, PhD; Gautam Dantas, PhD; Brian F Gage, MD, MSc; Mojgan Golzy, PhD; Aditi Gupta, PhD; Catherine Rose Hoyt, PhD, OTD, OTR/L (3rd row, left to right) Aaron N. Johnson, PhD; James G. Krings, MD, MSCI; Xiaowei Li, PhD; Jonathan Daniel Moreno, MD, PhD; Dhiren Patel, MD; Linda Ruth Peterson, MD, FACC, FAHA, FASE (4th row, left to right) Devita Stallings, MSN, PhD, RN; Lulu Sun, MD, PhD; Kwee Thio, MD; Guoqiao Wang, PhD; Yong Wang, PhD; Gregory F. Wu, MD, PhD; Jie Zheng, PhD

Washington University Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS) and The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital awards 25 investigators as part of the 15th annual Clinical and Translational Research Funding Program (CTRFP). The CTRFP is the largest internal grant funding program of the ICTS. Applicants are required to submit proposals for projects that promote the translation […]

New strategy reduces brain damage in Alzheimer’s and related disorders, in mice (Links to an external site)

Astrocytes are normal non-neuronal brain cells, but in their reactive form they can harm, rather than protect, brain tissue. Mice with tau tangles in their brains — a model of Alzheimer’s and related diseases — have fewer reactive astrocytes (green) in their brains when treated with the drug digoxin (left) than untreated mice (right). Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered that targeting astrocytes reduces tau-related brain damage and inflammation in mice, a finding that could lead to better therapies for Alzheimer’s and related tauopathies.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common and best known of the tauopathies, a set of neurodegenerative brain diseases caused by toxic tangles of the protein tau. A study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has shown that targeting astrocytes — an inflammatory cell in the brain — reduces tau-related brain […]

For accuracy, brain studies of complex behavior require thousands of people (Links to an external site)

Scientists rely on brainwide association studies to measure brain structure and function — using brain scans — and link them to mental illness and other complex behaviors. But a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Minnesota shows that most published brainwide association studies are performed with too few participants to yield reliable findings.

As brain scans have become more detailed and informative in recent decades, neuroimaging has seemed to promise a way for doctors and scientists to “see” what’s going wrong inside the brains of people with mental illnesses or neurological conditions. Such imaging has revealed correlations between brain anatomy or function and illness, suggesting potential new ways […]

CDC director discusses COVID-19 pandemic during Medical Campus visit (Links to an external site)

Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), visited Washington University School of Medicine March 2 and 3 to discuss lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), visited Washington University School of Medicine last week to discuss lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the Department of Medicine’s weekly Grand Rounds series, she sat down March 3 with William G. Powderly, MD, the J. William […]

Does improving sleep reduce signs of early Alzheimer’s disease? (Links to an external site)

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are launching a phase 2 clinical trial to study whether using medication to treat sleep problems in older adults can reduce signs of early Alzheimer’s disease.

The TV sitcom grandpa character who always seems to fall asleep at unfortunate moments is so common it’s almost a cliché. But daytime napping and disjointed sleep at night aren’t normal parts of aging. Sleep disturbances can be an early sign of a neurodegenerative condition, and they may be treatable.

Risk, resiliency in aging brain focus of $33 million grant (Links to an external site)

A functional MRI scan reveals the default mode network in the brain of a person at rest (above). Researchers with the Adult Aging Brain Connectome Study are collecting these and similar brain scans from 1,000 adults to study risk and resilience in the aging brain. The project, which involves researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and other institutions, is funded by a $33.1 million grant from the National Institute on Aging.

A large study that investigates just what keeps our brains sharp as we age and what contributes to cognitive decline has been launched by researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Harvard University/Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Minnesota Medical School and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).