$3.6M to Fund Personalized 3D Brain Maps to Guide Personalized Surgeries
Removing a brain tumor requires walking a fine line: Remove too little, and the disease remains; remove too much, and sight, speech or movement may be impaired. To help strike that delicate balance, neurosurgeries often are performed with the aid of 3-D maps of patients’ brains. But such maps typically show anatomical landmarks and don’t…
Online Database Aims to Collect, Organize Research on Cancer Mutations
The body of knowledge on cancer genomics is massive and ever-expanding. But this wealth of potentially critical information is far less likely to be of help to patients if it is inaccessible to the doctors who treat them. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed an online “knowledgebase” intended for…
Study Sheds Light on Parasite That Causes River Blindness
The parasite that causes river blindness infects about 37 million people in parts of Africa and Latin America, causing blindness and other major eye and skin diseases in about 5 million of them. A study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis sheds light on the genetic makeup of the parasite, a step…
Earlier Alzheimer’s Diagnosis May Be Possible with New Imaging Compound
By the time unambiguous signs of memory loss and cognitive decline appear in people with Alzheimer’s disease, their brains already are significantly damaged, dotted with clumps of a destructive protein known as amyloid beta. For years, scientists have sought methods and clues to help identify brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s earlier in the disease process,…