Our Highlights

When Srikanth Singamaneni and Guy Genin, both professors of mechanical engineering and materials science at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, established a new collaboration with researchers from the School of Medicine in late 2019, they didn’t know the landscape of infectious disease research was about to shift dramatically. In a conference room overlooking Forest Park on a beautiful fall day, the team had one goal in mind: tackle the biggest infectious disease problem facing the world right then.

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis were awarded $569 million in research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in federal fiscal year 2022, elevating WashU to No. 3 among U.S. medical schools in total NIH research funding support. The new ranking surpasses last year’s impressive research successes, when WashU Medicine rose to No. 4.

Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, the Dr. Robert J. Glaser Distinguished University Professor and director of the Edison Family Center for Genome Sciences & Systems Biology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been named this year’s recipient of the Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research. The honor recognizes Gordon’s groundbreaking studies of the role of the gut microbiome in human health and disease.

Christine O’Brien, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, and her team have received a $20,000 prize from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Technology for Maternal Health Challenge.

A nasal vaccine for COVID-19 – based on technology developed at Washington University in St. Louis – is on the path to becoming available in the U.S., Europe and Japan.

The world’s first nasal vaccine for COVID-19 was approved Tuesday, Sept. 6, in India for emergency use. The vaccine, called iNCOVACC, is based on technology licensed from Washington University in St. Louis and developed in collaboration with Bharat Biotech International Limited in India.

The search for effective treatments has been hampered because these highly structured cells cannot be cultured outside of the body, and because immortalized cell lines are not true to their structure. New research from Washington University’s McKelvey School of Engineering and the School of Medicine aims to overcome this critical barrier.

St. Louis-based clinical-stage biotechnology startup Wugen, which has raised more than $200 million in venture funding, has launched a clinical trial for one of its cancer-fighting therapies.

Wugen, Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing a pipeline of off-the-shelf cell therapies to treat a broad range of hematological and solid tumor malignancies, today announced that the first patient has been dosed in a Phase 1/2 trial of WU-CART-007 for the treatment of relapsed or refractory (R/R) T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL)/lymphoblastic lymphoma (LBL).

Randall Bateman, M.D. — the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Distinguished Professor of Neurology — and colleagues set out to determine the diagnostic accuracy of a new blood test for detecting early signs of AD.