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)
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)
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 […]
Brain-Imaging Studies Hampered by Small Data Sets, Study Finds (Links to an external site)
Researchers have long used imaging technology to try to understand mental-health ailments. But with relatively few participants, such studies may not be producing valid findings.
For accuracy, brain studies of complex behavior require thousands of people (Links to an external site)
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 […]
Could drugs prevent Alzheimer’s? These trials aim to find out (Links to an external site)
Every two weeks, a nurse visits 43-year-old Marty Reiswig in Denver, Colorado, and injects him with an experimental drug called gantenerumab. Every month, Reiswig drives into town for a brain scan to make sure the drug has not caused any bleeds. And every year he flies to St Louis, Missouri, for four days of brain […]
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 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)
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 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).
Blood test for Alzheimer’s highly accurate in large, international study (Links to an external site)
A blood test developed at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has proven highly accurate in detecting early signs of Alzheimer’s disease in a study involving nearly 500 patients from across three continents, providing further evidence that the test should be considered for routine screening and diagnosis.