Our Highlights

David T. Curiel, MD, PhD, and Michael S. Diamond, MD, PhD, both of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, have received the Washington University Chancellor’s Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship for their development of a nasal vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

A WashU-based life sciences startup that patented a groundbreaking bloodstream marker that flags potential cardiovascular disease recently won a $250,000 investment prize in a major national pitch competition.

Wearable brain-imaging tech aims to reveal how the brain works in natural, realistic situations. Washington University faculty members Joseph P. Culver, Jason Trobaugh and Ed Richter, along with Adam Eggebrecht, have received a grant from the NIH to develop and commercialize a brain-imaging cap that uses LED light to gauge brain activity.

Diabetes researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have uncovered at least one reason insulin-secreting cells made from stem cells in the lab don’t work as well as natural cells. The discovery could help speed progress toward making insulin-secreting cells — called islet beta cells — more effective in the treatment of insulin-dependent Type 1 diabetes.

A team led by Washington University in St. Louis has been awarded $1 million over two years from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Regional Innovation Engines, or NSF Engines, program. The team, called NEURO360, is among some 40 teams nationwide to receive NSF Engines Development Awards, which aim to spur collaborations to create economic, societal and technological opportunities for their respective regions.

The newly established Needleman Program for Innovation and Commercialization at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is seeking proposals to fund promising new therapeutic candidates with the goal of achieving designation as investigational new drugs by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The venture capital (VC) industry has backed some of the most successful American companies and innovation. It is responsible for tremendous growth in pension funds and endowments in recent years and is considered one of the great American inventions, according to Doug Villhard, director of the entrepreneurship program at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis scientists Michael S. Diamond, MD, PhD, (left) and Sean Whelan, PhD, lead a team working to minimize the risk of another devastating coronavirus pandemic by designing a vaccine that reduces sickness and death caused by all potentially deadly coronaviruses, including ones that have not yet affected people. The research is supported by an $8 million grant from the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Tools and techniques of engineering can be applied to diagnosis, treatment and prevention in women’s health

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed new imaging technology that can produce 3D maps showing the magnitude and distribution of uterine contractions in real time and across the entire surface of the uterus during labor.