Some scientific research studies collect qualitative data — information provided through focus groups, surveys and interviews — that harbor potentially telling information, including cities lived in, work histories, personal anecdotes and other details. Privacy concerns have kept such data largely inaccessible to the wider scientific community and the public, with only the study’s researchers having access.

But now, a team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has developed software that flags sensitive information in interview text — such as where a person works or lives — making it easier for scientists to remove or modify identifiable details. Subtracting the risk of identifying study participants opens the doors to sharing qualitative data with other researchers and the public, which has several benefits, according to James DuBois, executive director of the Bioethics Research Center within the WashU Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences.

“Sharing data can be critical for improving public trust in science,” said DuBois, who led the development of the software, which has become the De-ID App. “Greater access to data also supports new research with existing data, allows for verification of results, and provides teaching opportunities. Our software will guide researchers in the safe and ethical sharing of qualitative data that have historically remained hidden.”

DuBois developed the software with fellow researchers at WashU Medicine and other institutions. The group then worked with WashU’s Office of Technology Management to license the software to Socio-Cultural Research Consultants, a company that creates tools for researchers in various sectors, for further development and commercialization. De-ID became commercially available in early 2026.

‘As much as necessary and as little as possible’

Under a National Institutes of Health (NIH) data-sharing policy updated in 2023, researchers are required to share all data gathered during NIH-funded research — including qualitative data — with the public. But to meet that requirement without sacrificing participants’ privacy or making their information vulnerable to misuse, researchers must painstakingly identify and remove personal details from the text before sharing it, which can be time-consuming and vulnerable to human error.

With funding from the NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute, DuBois’ team collaborated with programmers and researchers in the WashU Medicine Institute for Informatics, Data Science & Biostatistics (I2DB), as well as researchers and data curators at a large data repository at the University of Michigan, to develop resources to help scientists to meet the NIH’s new requirements. They created a toolkit to guide researchers through the intricacies of qualitative data sharing and developed the new software to help researchers de-identify private information quickly and correctly.

De-ID highlights and suggests generic replacements using a color-coding scheme: red for the 18 identifiers protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, including names, Social Security numbers and phone numbers; yellow for information that has a medium risk of identifying a participant on their own or when combined with other details contained in the file, such as dates or locations; and blue for low-risk information that is probably safe to keep but can occasionally identify an individual when combined with other information in the file, such as age references or driver’s license numbers.

The original owner of the data is prompted to review the flagged details and accept the suggested changes or otherwise alter identifiable details as warranted. DuBois cautioned that this process requires care and discernment: Mindlessly deleting or modifying potential identifiers could negatively impact the usefulness of the data, he warned.

“We follow the rule of as much as necessary and as little as possible,” said DuBois, who is also the Steven J. Bander Professor of Medical Ethics and Professionalism at WashU Medicine. “It’s a fine line. If you want other researchers using the data to understand the context and who is speaking, you want to leave in as much as you can — but you absolutely don’t want to risk identifying any individuals.”

Aditi Gupta, an assistant professor of biostatistics at the I2DB, and Albert M. Lai, a professor of medicine in the Division of General Medical Sciences at WashU Medicine, also were leaders in the software’s development.

“The software knows to look for certain details,” Lai said. “But it doesn’t know how to combine details and determine whether they can identify a person. For example, it can flag a person’s age, but it would be challenging to identify someone based on that information. However, when combined with information such as their profession and workplace institution, it could make someone look unique.”

A scientific manuscript serves as a vehicle for disseminating discoveries and fostering innovation. It allows other researchers to build upon a study’s findings, advancing societal understanding and progress — in theory. But the challenge of sharing sensitive, qualitative data has limited its potential impact, DuBois explained.

“Most research participants’ voices never get heard,” said DuBois, who is also a professor of psychological and brain sciences in WashU Arts & Sciences. “Researchers performing qualitative studies control how the story is told. There is huge room for bias in research articles that rely on data collected from interviews, focus groups and surveys. Sharing full data can help correct for this, but it must be done in a way that respects confidentiality. That was the aim in developing this software.”

About WashU Medicine

WashU Medicine is a global leader in academic medicine, including biomedical research, patient care and educational programs with more than 3,000 faculty. Its National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding portfolio is the second largest among U.S. medical schools and has grown 83% since 2016. Together with institutional investment, WashU Medicine commits well over $1 billion annually to basic and clinical research innovation and training. Its faculty practice is consistently among the top five in the country, with more than 2,000 faculty physicians practicing at 130 locations. WashU Medicine physicians exclusively staff Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals — the academic hospitals of BJC HealthCare — and Siteman Cancer Center, a partnership between BJC HealthCare and WashU Medicine and the only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center in Missouri. WashU Medicine physicians also treat patients at BJC’s community hospitals in our region. With a storied history in MD/PhD training, WashU Medicine recently dedicated $100 million to scholarships and curriculum renewal for its medical students, and is home to top-notch training programs in every medical subspecialty as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and audiology and communications sciences.

Originally published on the WashU Medicine website

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The study is published March 31 in the journal Nature Communications.

According to the researchers, the study’s results provide further evidence that enhancing autophagy, a key cellular process involved in breaking down and recycling cellular waste, could help treat neurodegenerative diseases. Autophagy is known to decline with age, so strategies to restore it could help address multiple age-related diseases.

The researchers, led by Celeste Karch, PhD, the Barbara Burton and Reuben M. Morriss III Professor in the WashU Medicine Department of Psychiatry, studied a specific mutation in a brain protein called tau that causes the protein to become misfolded and alter its normal function. In general, when tau proteins become misfolded, they build up inside neurons and contribute to various forms of dementia, including Alzheimer’s dementia and frontotemporal dementia, a neurodegenerative disease similar to Alzheimer’s that often strikes earlier — in middle age — and typically involves significant changes in personality and behavior that precede cognitive decline.

“We found that this tau mutation can clog the cell’s normal cellular clean-up system and interfere with how cells in the brain clean up misfolded proteins,” Karch said. “One compound in particular had an impressive effect in making the cells look almost normal in their clearance of misfolded proteins. In the future, we can envision new therapies for neurodegenerative diseases that may be similar to what we have now for cancer: multi-pronged treatments that combine several drugs attacking different aspects of the disease simultaneously.”

For example, in Alzheimer’s disease, a therapy designed to enhance autophagy could help eliminate tau and, in theory, be combined with FDA-approved antibody therapies that reduce amyloid beta, another damaging Alzheimer’s protein that builds up in neurons and contributes to dementia. More broadly, an autophagy-based approach that clears misfolded proteins could be combined with drugs such as antisense oligonucleotides that reduce production of those same proteins, thus creating a complementary, two-pronged strategy.

The tau mutation analyzed in the current study was first identified in 1998 by researchers at the WashU Medicine Knight Alzheimer Disease Research Center. In this new study, the researchers studied neurons that had been reprogrammed from skin cells sampled from patients with frontotemporal dementia who carried the tau mutation. In the neurons, the mutated tau proteins caused waste-recycling centers called lysosomes, which are involved in autophagy, to become dysfunctional, allowing cellular waste to accumulate in the lysosomes, which may contribute to neuronal death. The researchers found that enhancing autophagy with an analog of the chemical compound G2 improved clearance of the garbage, reduced tau levels in the lysosomes and prevented cellular toxicity and death.

G2 was discovered in 2019 in the labs of WashU Medicine co-authors David H. Perlmutter, MD, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs, the George and Carol Bauer Dean of WashU Medicine, and the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Distinguished Professor; Gary A. Silverman, MD, PhD, the Harriet B. Spoehrer Professor and head of the Department of Pediatrics; and Stephen C. Pak, PhD, a professor of pediatrics in the Division of Newborn Medicine. G2 was identified via screening experiments seeking drugs that could reduce the accumulation of an aggregation-prone protein in a C. elegans model of alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency, which can cause severe liver disease. The compound was later shown to boost autophagy function in mammalian cell model systems.

WashU Medicine researchers also have shown that G2 can protect brain cells from death in cells modeling Huntington’s disease, a fatal inherited neurodegenerative disease caused by a genetic mutation present at birth. In the cellular model of Huntington’s disease, the compound prevented the buildup of a harmful RNA molecule, according to work led by WashU Medicine’s Andrew S. Yoo, PhD, the Philip and Sima K. Needleman Distinguished Professor in the Department of Developmental Biology.

“It’s exciting to see that this compound has protective effects in the context of multiple neurodegenerative diseases,” Karch said. “G2 seems to have similar protective effects even when different dysfunctional proteins are building up in different types of cells.”

With evidence that G2 helps cells clear harmful molecules across multiple cell types implicated in different diseases, it and similar compounds are attractive candidates for preventing cell death, including neurodegeneration, in diseases driven by the toxic buildup of misfolded proteins or other damaging molecules.

In the future, Karch and her colleagues plan to continue evaluating the effectiveness of G2 in clearing misfolded proteins caused by a variety of tau mutations and in multiple types of brain cells.

Mirfakhar FS, Marsh JA, Sato C, Schache KJ, Minaya MA, Dolle RE, Pak SC, Silverman GA, Perlmutter DH, Macauley SL, Karch CM. A pathogenic Tau mutation drives autophagy-lysosome dysfunction that limits Tau degradation in a model of frontotemporal dementia. Nature Communications. March 31, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-70473-5.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant numbers P30AG066444, R01AG056293, RF1NS110890, U54NS123985, UL1TR002345 and S10MH126964; the Hope Center for Neurological Disorders; the Rainwater Charitable Organization; the Farrell Family Fund for Alzheimer’s Disease; Washington University School of Medicine; the Children’s Discovery Institute of Washington University and St. Louis Children’s Hospital, grant numbers CDI-CORE-2015-505 and CDI-CORE-20190813; and the Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital, grant numbers 3770 and 4642. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

About WashU Medicine

WashU Medicine is a global leader in academic medicine, including biomedical research, patient care and educational programs with more than 3,000 faculty. Its National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding portfolio is the second largest among U.S. medical schools and has grown 83% since 2016. Together with institutional investment, WashU Medicine commits well over $1 billion annually to basic and clinical research innovation and training. Its faculty practice is consistently among the top five in the country, with more than 2,000 faculty physicians practicing at 130 locations. WashU Medicine physicians exclusively staff Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals — the academic hospitals of BJC HealthCare — and Siteman Cancer Center, a partnership between BJC HealthCare and WashU Medicine and the only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center in Missouri. WashU Medicine physicians also treat patients at BJC’s community hospitals in our region. With a storied history in MD/PhD training, WashU Medicine recently dedicated $100 million to scholarships and curriculum renewal for its medical students, and is home to top-notch training programs in every medical subspecialty as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and audiology and communications sciences.

Originally published on the WashU Medicine website

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“Taco,” he said to himself.

Followed by “Beef … Cow … Cow gets slaughtered … Cow dies.”

“Oh, dang, so will I,” Jersey said out loud. “I’m going to die, and I don’t know when.”

For eight years, Jersey’s brain twisted his thoughts, connecting random, everyday objects to death. “Every night and a couple times a day, I’d get this same feeling of fear, of pure dread,” said Jersey (not his real name).

He also suffered from debilitating chest pains and headaches. “I had no control when they’d happen. Anything — literally anything — triggered my bad feelings.”

The lack of control he felt about death caused him to attempt suicide two times.

Jersey said he might have tried to kill himself again if he hadn’t entered Adolescent Dialectical Behavioral Therapy in the Collaborative Network for Overcoming Emotional Challenges, Crisis and Trauma (CONNECT) in the WashU Medicine Department of Psychiatry’s Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

CONNECT encompasses research-backed, holistic services and evidence-based practices for preteens and teenagers suffering from untreated trauma-related disorders, pervasive emotion dysregulation and suicidal behavior. “WashU Medicine is addressing a mental health crisis among young people in our community,” said Cynthia E. Rogers, MD, the Blanche F. Ittleson Professor of Psychiatry, a professor of public health and director of the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.  “The need for adolescent psychiatric services is higher than ever and shows no signs of slowing. The good news is that these conditions are especially responsive to timely, evidence-based interventions like the ones we have in this program.”

CONNECT provides swift patient care by streamlining the division’s clinical services to a one-stop place to receive services ranging from short-term psychiatric care to comprehensive trauma treatment and evidence-based treatment for pervasive thoughts about suicide or self-harm and other high-risk behaviors for adolescents. It also provides case management and supportive services to caregivers.

Its debut parallels that of St. Louis Children’s and KVC Health Systems new mental health hospital and intensive outpatient center slated to open later this year. St. Louis Children’s, part of BJC Health System, is staffed by WashU Medicine physicians. The CONNECT program will integrate with the new center to provide a continuity of care for youth mental health.

A centralized place for the most current treatments

By all accounts, programs like CONNECT prove crucial in addressing what the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Surgeon General have called an unprecedented mental health crisis in young people. According to federal data, in 2021, nearly 57% of teenage girls and 29% of teenage boys reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 14.

“Adolescent mood disorders present complicated, life-threatening consequences and, while they may seem insurmountable to patients and their families, they are very treatable, especially when high-quality treatment is started early,” said Rogers, the child-psychiatrist-in-chief at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, where many adolescents are initially treated for mental health disorders. “WashU Medicine clinicians have the tools to stop — or at least drastically alter — debilitating outcomes not just in the short-term but across the patient’s life by decreasing risks such as suicide attempts and substance abuse disorders.”

As a national leader in child and adolescent psychiatry, WashU Medicine is positioned to provide high-quality care unparalleled in the region by targeting the biological and environmental factors contributing to adolescents’ emotional state and stability, said Eric J. Lenze, MD, the Wallace and Lucille Renard Professor of Psychiatry and head of the WashU Medicine Department of Psychiatry.

“Our clinical programs are among the best due to WashU Medicine’s commitment to academic medicine, in which clinical care, research and education are inextricably linked to symbiotic relationships,” Lenze said. “When families use our programs, they can be confident that they are receiving the most current, comprehensive and research-based treatments available. Our clinics leverage the cutting-edge research and medical resources of WashU Medicine and St. Louis Children’s Hospital.”

A multi-pronged approach

Private philanthropy has played a critical role in strengthening WashU Medicine’s adolescent psychiatric services. An anonymous donor made a $10 million gift to establish and endow CONNECT,  uniting three specialized programs into one coordinated effort: the Bridge Program, the Trauma Response Program and the Adolescent Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and Family Resiliency Program. Additional funding for CONNECT was provided by Jackie and Randy Baker, who created a spendable fund to address the program’s immediate needs.

Often, outpatient psychiatric care starts through the Bridge Program, which offers transitional care to adolescents who have been treated for a suicide attempt or other mental health crisis in an inpatient center or, more commonly, a hospital emergency room. In the past year alone, the Bridge Clinic has treated adolescents from 30 counties in Missouri and Illinois.

While a hospital stay is often lifesaving for adolescents in crisis, it can lead to what health-care providers call “boarding.” This occurs when patients remain in the emergency room for weeks or months because they may lack resources for the care they need. Health-care providers aim to avoid delays because research has shown that receiving treatment within two weeks of an emergency room visit can decrease the risk of repeated psychiatric stays and hospitalizations.

Via CONNECT, patients in the Bridge Program receive a dedicated interdisciplinary team of health-care workers who ensure timely care management and intensive treatment. Adolescents may participate in one, two or three of the programs, depending on their evolving needs.

“Many times, families and pediatricians know a child needs help, but they’re uncertain what type of help or how to access it,” said T. Eric Spiegel, MD, a WashU Medicine professor of psychiatry and associate division director of child and adolescent psychiatry. “CONNECT allows families to have one point of contact with WashU Medicine and St. Louis Children’s, and the psychiatric services to eliminate delays and deliver the appropriate treatment.” For psychiatric providers, the program encourages collaboration among team members, ensuring everyone is aligned and striving toward clear treatment goals.

The Trauma Response Program has served more than 2,000 patients and their families since before the pandemic, while the number of referrals has increased significantly during the same period. The American Psychological Association defines trauma as an emotional response to a one-time event, such as experiencing a car accident or natural disaster, as well as suffering chronic episodes like physical or sexual abuse, living in a violent or war-torn community or bullying. Living with trauma is a risk factor for multiple mental health diagnoses and mood disorders, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, psychosis and substance use disorders.

Similarly, the dialectical behavioral therapy program is in high demand. It started two years ago and already has received more than 400 referrals. As one of the best evidence-based treatments for suicide and self-harm, dialectical behavioral therapy helps teens experiencing severe mood disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders.

Typically, the therapy consists of year-long treatment encompassing weekly individual therapy, the availability of 24/7 crisis coaching from therapists, and a skills group for the teen and one caregiver. The leading evidence-based treatment for suicide and pervasive emotion dysregulation, DBT provides skills in mindfulness, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness and distress tolerance.

Finding happiness

Dialectical behavioral therapy’s focus on distress tolerance has proven to be a highly effective treatment for Jersey, said Josh Jones, a licensed clinical social worker and a dialectical behavioral therapist in the program who works with patients like Jersey.

Much of learning how to tolerate distressing emotions, situations, conversations and thoughts centers around being uncomfortable. “Part of what we teach in dialectical behavioral therapy is that pain is a part of being alive and how to learn to accept it,” Jones said. “Accepting doesn’t mean you have to like it. Rather, it’s acknowledging the reality of it and adjusting our behavior to the reality.”

The therapy entails many steps, conversations and unpleasant emotions. Jones said navigating the pain involves defining and distinguishing between facts and judgments, exploring the feelings associated with each one, and experiencing emotions — no matter how scary — and surviving the discomfort as a way to make peace with their feelings.

For Jersey, that meant acknowledging that he will die no matter what. Within that reality, Jersey learned to hold two truths in one space: his loss of control related to death and his ability to find joy in the activities he likes to do, such as foraging for edible mushrooms and berries in the woods; identifying flora and fauna, including insects; building a computer from scratch; or writing about his mental health struggles, which he hopes to turn into a children’s book to help kids.

“I am still very afraid of having no control over my death,” Jersey said. “But my therapy has helped me realize that death is fixed. I can’t pray it away no matter how hard I try. And if I were to die by my own hands, then I wouldn’t be able to feel happiness. It’s such a relief to finally know happiness.”

Originally published on the WashU Medicine website

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The immunotherapy was developed by WashU Medicine physician-scientists who treat patients at Siteman Cancer Center, based at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine.

The therapy — called WU-CART-007 (soficabtagene geleucel) — targets specific blood cancers called T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) and T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma (T-LL). These are aggressive forms of blood cancer that originate in the immune system’s T cells, a type of white blood cell important for the body’s immune response. These cancers often don’t respond at all to standard care or return after several rounds of treatment, leaving patients with few treatment options and poor prognoses. Stem cell transplantation is the only curative treatment for such cancers, but these patients rarely qualify for it because they must first achieve remission following early rounds of chemotherapy, which is rare for these blood cancers.

The FDA’s Breakthrough Therapy designation aims to speed up the development and regulatory review of treatments for serious or life-threatening conditions, especially therapies that may offer substantial improvements over existing options. The Breakthrough Therapy designation for Wugen’s immunotherapy is based on preliminary clinical evidence showing early success in treating these aggressive blood cancers. Early-phase clinical studies have demonstrated that the therapy can selectively target and eliminate cancerous T cells with manageable side effects.

About 1,000 people are diagnosed with T-cell cancers each year in the U.S. If the cancer does not respond to treatment or returns after initial treatment, patients survive an average of six months, and fewer than 7% are still living at the five-year mark.

“This therapy has the potential to enable long-term survival for this patient population by controlling the disease and allowing patients — who would otherwise not be eligible — to proceed to stem cell transplantation, the only potentially curative treatment for these blood cancers,” said WashU Medicine oncologist John F. DiPersio, MD, PhD, the Virginia E. & Sam J. Golman Professor of Medicine and director of WashU Medicine’s Center for Gene and Cellular Immunotherapy, who first developed the therapy in his lab at WashU Medicine. “We remain hopeful that the ongoing Phase 2 study will be completed soon, and we’ll have positive results — but we’ll need some time to see how the patients do in both short-term and long-term follow up.”

DiPersio treats patients at Siteman Cancer Center and founded Wugen alongside other WashU Medicine investigators, including Matthew Cooper, PhD, who then was on the WashU Medicine faculty and now serves as Wugen’s chief scientific officer. The researchers worked with WashU’s Office of Technology Management (OTM) to launch the company in 2018.

The early-phase clinical trial that led to the Breakthrough Therapy designation was conducted in multiple study centers in the U.S., Australia and Europe. The Phase 1 study included 28 adult and adolescent patients with either T-cell lymphoblastic cancer that returned after several lines of therapy or that never responded to treatment. Of 11 patients who could be evaluated after treatment, the overall response rate was 91%, meaning 10 patients either showed no signs of cancer after treatment or their cancer cell burden was reduced significantly. Eight out of 11 patients (72.7%) achieved complete remission. At the study’s data cutoff, six who underwent a transplant remained in remission, with no evidence of disease six to 12 months later, according to the study published in the journal Blood.

“This FDA Breakthrough Therapy designation for soficabtagene geleucel highlights the role of Siteman Cancer Center, a leading NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, and WashU Medicine in advancing innovative CAR-T cell therapies for aggressive T-cell leukemias and lymphomas,” said Timothy J. Eberlein, MD, director of Siteman Cancer Center and the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Distinguished Professor at WashU Medicine. “The dedicated work of our physician-scientists and clinicians is translating the most cutting-edge cellular immunotherapy research into the newest treatment options for patients with relapsed or refractory T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia and T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma.”

The phase 2 trial is currently ongoing. At the Siteman site, the clinical trials have been led by principal investigator Armin Ghobadi, MD, a professor of medicine, director of cellular therapies at Siteman, and clinical director of WashU Medicine’s Center for Gene and Cellular Immunotherapy. Siteman Kids at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and WashU Medicine is a key site for the pediatric portion of the clinical trial, co-led by Thomas Pfeiffer, MD, an assistant professor of pediatrics. Ghobadi and Pfeiffer have no financial interest in Wugen.

A major advantage of the treatment is its “off-the-shelf” availability, eliminating the need to manufacture an individualized cell product for each patient. The cell therapy can be prepared in advance from cells donated by healthy individuals and used to treat any patient with a T-cell cancer. In contrast, already-approved CAR-T cell therapies are adapted from the patient’s own immune cells, a process that typically takes three to four weeks. The accelerated treatment timeline of the Wugen immunotherapy reduces logistical and financial barriers associated with most cell-based therapies. This speed can make a meaningful difference because it is not unusual for patients with these aggressive cancers to die while waiting for the therapeutic cells to be prepared.

These particular blood cancers present a unique challenge because the therapeutic cells and the cancer cells are both T cells, so DiPersio and his colleagues came up with further innovations to prevent the therapeutic T cells from mistaking one another for the cancer and causing CAR-T cell fratricide. All other approved CAR-T cell therapies target B cell cancers, which do not have this T cell self-targeting complication.

About WashU Medicine

WashU Medicine is a global leader in academic medicine, including biomedical research, patient care and educational programs with more than 3,000 faculty. Its National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding portfolio is the second largest among U.S. medical schools and has grown 83% since 2016. Together with institutional investment, WashU Medicine commits well over $1 billion annually to basic and clinical research innovation and training. Its faculty practice is consistently among the top five in the country, with more than 2,000 faculty physicians practicing at 130 locations. WashU Medicine physicians exclusively staff Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals — the academic hospitals of BJC HealthCare — and Siteman Cancer Center, a partnership between BJC HealthCare and WashU Medicine and the only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center in Missouri. WashU Medicine physicians also treat patients at BJC’s community hospitals in our region. With a storied history in MD/PhD training, WashU Medicine recently dedicated $100 million to scholarships and curriculum renewal for its medical students, and is home to top-notch training programs in every medical subspecialty as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and audiology and communications sciences.

Originally published on the WashU Medicine website

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Sarah Ackerman, an assistant professor of pathology and immunology at WashU Medicine, has been named a winner of the Maximizing Innovation in Neuroscience Discovery (MIND) Prize by the Pershing Square Foundation. She is one of eight new fellows — all early- to mid-career scientists in the U.S. — who will receive $250,000 annually for three years, creating a community of next-frontier thinkers who can uncover a deeper understanding of the brain and cognition.

Ackerman, who is also affiliated with the WashU Medicine Brain Immunology and Glia Center, uses zebrafish, fruit flies and human brain samples to study how the brain’s support cells, called glial cells, wire the brain. With the funding from the Pershing Square Foundation, Ackerman aims to understand if swapping of energy-producing mitochondria between glial cells and neurons — a process thought to play a role in cellular repair and survival — is required for healthy brain aging. Using advanced imaging and genetic tools, her lab will track how this process changes with age and in Alzheimer’s disease, potentially helping to reveal a new pathway to restore neuronal function and slow neurodegeneration.

Read more on the WashU Medicine website.

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AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals. New fellows will be celebrated at a forum May 29 in Washington, D.C.

The 2025 WashU members are:

Yixin Chen

Chen, PhD, a professor of computer science at WashU McKelvey Engineering, focuses his research on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, data mining, foundation models, AI for scientific discovery and computational biomedicine. He is the director of the Collaborative Human-AI Learning and Operation (HALO) Center, which advances principles and methods for productive human-AI collaboration, including fairness, trust, awareness, privacy and situational sensitivity in human-AI interaction. Chen is also a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Ram Dixit

Dixit, PhD, is chair of the WashU Department of Biology and the George and Charmaine Mallinckrodt Professor in Arts & Sciences. He researches how microtubules dynamically become patterned into specific arrays and how these arrays guide cell wall deposition to control the shape of plants and their cellular functions. His lab is also working to uncover how plant cells decode diverse mechanical stimuli and the complex interplay between mechanical and biochemical stimuli underlying plant growth and development.

David Fike

Fike, PhD, chair of earth, environmental, and planetary sciences, is the Glassberg/Greensfelder Distinguished University Professor in Art & Sciences. Fike uses geochemical analyses to investigate the links between biological activity, geological processes and ambient environmental conditions today and to reconstruct how they have varied over Earth’s history. His research focuses on the occurrence of past ice ages and the rise of atmospheric oxygen and its relationship to animal evolution and mass extinctions.

Andreas Herrlich

Herrlich, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine, of cell biology and of physiology in the Division of Nephrology at WashU Medicine, focuses on cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in kidney injury, repair and fibrosis, and in interorgan communication in the kidney-lung, kidney-heart and kidney-brain axis. Using advanced in vivo and in vitro models and bioinformatics, Herrlich’s work aims to develop therapeutic strategies to prevent kidney injury and its secondary organ complications, such as remote lung inflammation with respiratory failure, cardiovascular disease and neurocognitive dysfunction.

Petra Levin

Levin, PhD, the George William and Irene Koechig Freiberg Professor of Biology, is also associate chair of faculty research and development in Art & Sciences. Her research investigates the impact of the environment on bacterial growth, cell size and metabolic signaling. Her group is particularly interested in how changes in pH and nutrient availability relevant to human infection sites affect antibiotic sensitivity in bacterial pathogens, including Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae.

John E. McCarthy

McCarthy, PhD, a professor of mathematics in Art & Sciences, is a big proponent of pure mathematics and the useful applications that can emerge from that discipline. He primarily works in operator theory, the study of matrices in infinite dimensional space, and analysis, mathematics that decompose complicated signals into simpler pieces. Applications range from quantum mechanics to improvements in ultrasound and MRI sensing. He collaborates widely across WashU developing mathematical models with other scientists.

Karen O’Malley

O’Malley, PhD, a professor of neuroscience at WashU Medicine, studies how chemical signals critical for brain development and intellectual disabilities control biological signaling and behaviors that contribute to these processes. Her lab has shown that receptors for chemical signals that control neurons involved in learning and memory are not just on the cell surface, but also on intracellular membranes including the nucleus. O’Malley’s lab is working to better understand how signaling from inside the cell initiates unique signaling cascades that play dynamic roles in development and learning.

David Pagliarini

Pagliarini, PhD, is a BJC Investigator and the Hugo F. and Ina C. Urbauer Professor in cell biology and physiology, biochemistry and molecular biophysics, and genetics, all at WashU Medicine. He studies mitochondria, cellular structures that produce much of the body’s energy, to better understand the biochemical basis of mitochondrial disorders. These conditions affect one in 5,000 people and can impair neurological function, muscle strength, vision and other body functions. Pagliarini was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in 2024.

Lori Setton

Setton, PhD, chair and the Lucy & Stanley Lopata Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at McKelvey Engineering, focuses her research on the role of mechanical factors in the degeneration and repair of soft tissues of the musculoskeletal system and on engineering and evaluating novel materials for tissue regeneration and drug delivery to treat musculoskeletal disease. She is a fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society, of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and of the American Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering.

Corinna Treitel

Treitel, PhD, the William Eliot Smith Endowed Professor and chair of history in Arts & Sciences, was recognized by AAAS for distinguished contributions to the history of science and medicine. Treitel has written about occultism and disenchantment, the rise of “natural eating” and its adoption by radically divergent political cultures, and the making of modern health consciousness. Treitel often engages in collaborative and transdisciplinary work. In 2015, she co-founded WashU’s medical humanities minor in Arts & Sciences. Today, she co-leads an international group of health humanities scholars.

Joshua Yuan

Yuan, PhD, chair and the Lucy & Stanley Lopata Professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at McKelvey Engineering, focuses his research on broad sustainability challenges and natural resources engineering; on designing biorefinery and biomaterials from renewable resources; and on environmental remediation, carbon capture and utilization, and synthetic and systems biology. He also is director of the National Science Foundation-funded Carbon Utilization Redesign for Biomanufacturing Engineering Research Center. Yuan also is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

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In the study, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis followed more than 333,000 U.S. veterans with type 2 diabetes for three years. Compared to continued use, they found that stopping or interrupting GLP-1 treatment for as little as six months was linked to a significant increase in the risk of major cardiovascular events. The longer the gap in treatment, the bigger the jump in risk — up to a 22% increase for heart attack, stroke and death after two years off GLP-1s, largely erasing the cardiovascular benefits gained during treatment.

The results, which appear March 18 in BMJ Medicine, show that the consequences of stopping GLP-1 drugs go beyond weight regain, extending to increased cardiovascular risk, and underscore the importance of continuous treatment for sustained heart protection.

“There is enormous exuberance about starting GLP-1 drugs, but not nearly enough attention to what happens when people stop,” said senior author Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, a WashU Medicine clinical epidemiologist and chief of the Research and Development Service at the VA Saint Louis Health Care System. “Many quit after a few months because of cost, side effects or shortages. When they stop, it’s not just weight that comes back; they experience a resurgence in inflammation, blood pressure, and cholesterol. Weight regain is visible; the metabolic reversal is not.”

“Our data suggest this metabolic whiplash is detrimental to heart health,” Al-Aly added. “Restarting the medication helped restore some protection, but only partially, showing that discontinuation leaves a lasting scar.”

GLP-1 benefits build slowly, erode quickly

GLP-1 medications include the semaglutide drugs Ozempic and Wegovy and the tirzepatide drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound. After noticing about half of users stop taking GLP-1s shortly after starting treatment, Al-Aly wanted to understand the consequences of discontinuing GLP-1 medications on cardiovascular health, particularly the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events, including heart attack, stroke and death. The study of 333,687 veterans compared 132,551 participants who were prescribed GLP-1s for their type 2 diabetes with 201,136 participants who were prescribed sulfonylureas, another treatment for diabetes, and followed the patients’ outcomes for up to three years. Sulfonylureas include the medications glipizide (Glucotrol), glimepiride (Amaryl) and glyburide (Diabeta and others).

The researchers evaluated the treatment status of GLP-1 users every six months. Over the course of the study, 26% of GLP-1 users stopped taking the medication and about 23% had an interruption of six months or more followed by resuming treatment.

Al-Aly and colleagues found a beneficial relationship between the continuous use of GLP-1s and fewer cardiovascular events. At the end of the trial, compared to the group taking sulfonylureas, participants who consistently took GLP-1 medications for the entire three-year period of the study had the most pronounced reduction in risk — 18%, or roughly 4 fewer major cardiovascular events per 100 people over three years. Those who continued GLP-1 treatment for two or two-and-a-half years before discontinuing for the remainder of the study also gained significant risk reduction (7% and 15%, respectively). Those who took GLP-1s for less than 18 months before discontinuing saw no significant risk reduction compared to the group on sulfonylureas at the end of the trial.

Those who interrupted GLP-1 treatment and subsequently resumed before the end of the three-year trial period experienced less benefit compared to those who stayed on the medication, with longer gaps in treatment corresponding to smaller reductions in cardiovascular risk. Compared to continued use of GLP-1s for three years, which corresponded to an 18% risk reduction, GLP-1 users who experienced interruption and subsequently resumed gained a 12% risk reduction on average. An interruption of just six months before resuming treatment still reduced the cardiovascular benefit, leading to a 4% to 8% increase in risk, compared to continuous use.

Discontinuations of one or two years without resuming GLP-1 use resulted in a 14% or 22% increased risk of cardiovascular events, respectively, compared to staying on the drugs. In other words, any benefits gained over the course of taking GLP-1 medications are quickly lost when patients stop.

These findings highlight the importance of maintaining continuous GLP-1 treatment to sustain cardiovascular benefits and indicate that strategies to reduce treatment discontinuity should be developed to maximize the cardioprotective effects of GLP-1s.

“Clinicians should treat adherence to GLP-1 treatment as an important outcome in its own right — not an afterthought,” Al-Aly said. “Health systems need plans in place to help people continue their medication indefinitely, recognizing that GLP-1s treat chronic conditions. That includes proactive management of side effects, candid conversations about the long-term nature of treatment, infrastructure to identify and support patients at risk of stopping and addressing the cost barriers that make GLP-1 therapy unsustainable for many.”

These measures are especially important, Al-Aly noted, because the cardiovascular protection provided by GLP-1 medication builds slowly, but it erodes quickly. As little as one year off the drug was more than enough for study participants to lose benefits cultivated over years of continuous treatment. Once lost, those gains were not fully restored by resuming treatment.

Xie Y, Choi T, Al-Aly Z. GLP-1RA discontinuation and risks of major adverse cardiovascular events in adults with type 2 diabetes: A target emulation trial. BMJ Medicine. March 18, 2026. DOI: 10.1136/bmjmed-2025-002150

This research was funded by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. The funders had no role in considering the study design or in the collection, analysis, interpretation of data, writing of the report, or decision to submit the article for publication. The contents do not represent the views of the US Department of Veterans Affairs or the US Government.

About WashU Medicine

WashU Medicine is a global leader in academic medicine, including biomedical research, patient care and educational programs with more than 3,000 faculty. Its National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding portfolio is the second largest among U.S. medical schools and has grown 83% since 2016. Together with institutional investment, WashU Medicine commits well over $1 billion annually to basic and clinical research innovation and training. Its faculty practice is consistently among the top five in the country, with more than 2,000 faculty physicians practicing at 130 locations. WashU Medicine physicians exclusively staff Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals — the academic hospitals of BJC HealthCare — and Siteman Cancer Center, a partnership between BJC HealthCare and WashU Medicine and the only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center in Missouri. WashU Medicine physicians also treat patients at BJC’s community hospitals in our region. With a storied history in MD/PhD training, WashU Medicine recently dedicated $100 million to scholarships and curriculum renewal for its medical students, and is home to top-notch training programs in every medical subspecialty as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and audiology and communications sciences.

Originally published on the WashU Medicine website

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Bruce D. Levy, MD, a highly regarded leader in academic medicine and an accomplished physician-scientist, has been named executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and the George and Carol Bauer Dean of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis — one of the nation’s top medical schools. He begins his new role July 1, announced Chancellor Andrew D. Martin.

Levy succeeds David H. Perlmutter, MD, who is concluding his deanship after leading WashU Medicine with extraordinary distinction for more than 10 years.

“Bruce Levy is a deeply respected leader in academic medicine whose career reflects a strong commitment to advancing discovery, improving patient care and training the next generation of physicians and scientists,” Martin said. “His collaborative approach, innovative mindset and dedication to expanding access to research-driven care make him uniquely suited to build on WashU Medicine’s extraordinary momentum at this important moment.

“I’d also like to once again share my deep gratitude for David Perlmutter. His leadership over the past decade has left an enduring mark on WashU Medicine and on the field of academic medicine more broadly. His experience, wisdom and commitment to advancing translational science will continue to benefit our community and the patients we serve for generations to come.”

Levy, who grew up in St. Louis and specializes in pulmonary and critical care medicine, is returning after more than 35 years at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, one of Harvard’s leading teaching hospitals. He has served in senior leadership positions at both institutions and currently is the inaugural executive vice chair of medicine at Mass General Brigham — which includes Brigham and Women’s Hospital — and the Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic at Harvard Medical School. 

At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, he was co-director of the medical residency program for 13 years, then chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine for 10 years, before becoming chair of the Department of Medicine and, most recently, executive vice chair of medicine for Mass General Brigham, where he has played a key role in integrating the departments of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, along with their 1,000 faculty members and 900 trainees.

He brings extensive leadership experience in academic medicine to his new role at a time of uncertainty surrounding federal research funding and health-care reimbursements, as well as growing demands on academic health systems to advance discovery while expanding access to care. At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Levy was lauded for strengthening the hospital’s clinical, research and education missions, even in the face of outside challenges.

“Academic medicine is at a pivotal moment, and I believe institutions like WashU Medicine have an extraordinary opportunity and responsibility to shape the future of academic life sciences and health care,” Levy said. “I’m inspired by WashU Medicine’s remarkable strengths across its missions of clinical care, discovery, education and community engagement, and by the collaborative culture that enables bold ideas to move from the laboratory to the clinic and into the community. I look forward to working with faculty, staff, students and trainees to build on this solid foundation and advance innovations and care that improve health for people in St. Louis and around the world.”

WashU Medicine — a global leader in biomedical research and discovery — ranks No. 2 in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and invests $1.2 billion annually in research. The medical school brings together more than 3,000 physicians and scientists working to solve some of health care’s most complex challenges. Through a longstanding affiliation with BJC HealthCare, WashU Medicine physicians care for patients at the nationally ranked Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Siteman Cancer Center, where care is informed and infused by the latest research discoveries.

Levy has strong personal connections to WashU. He grew up in a neighborhood bordering the university, and both his parents earned degrees from WashU: his mother an undergraduate degree in zoology and his father a medical degree. Both later joined the WashU Medicine community. His father was a hematologist and oncologist at what was then Jewish Hospital, and his mother was an electron microscopist in the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology. The younger Levy’s first experiences conducting research, while in high school, were in the labs of WashU Medicine researchers Robert Mecham, PhD, a cell biologist, and the late Robert Senior, MD, a pulmonologist.

“It was clear then, as it remains today, that WashU Medicine is a special place with exceptional strengths for inspiring and nurturing early careers in science and medicine,” Levy said. “I believe my early experiences at WashU were formative in my ultimate decision to train as a physician-scientist.”

Levy earned his medical degree in 1988 from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and attained board certification in internal medicine, critical care medicine and pulmonary disease.

He has treated patients at Brigham and Women’s Hospital since 1988, when he arrived for a residency in internal medicine. He was chief medical resident and stayed for clinical fellowships in pulmonary and critical care medicine and for research fellowships in medicine and biochemistry. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1993 and became an associate physician at Brigham and Women’s that same year, rising through the ranks at both institutions.

Among Levy’s many accomplishments are improving access to care in outpatient subspecialty clinics, enabling more patients to receive care for complex medical conditions. He was instrumental in creating the Lung Clinical Center and the Lung Research Center, which he helped to lead for 10 years.  These collaborative centers bring together physicians and investigators across several disciplines to provide the highest quality of care for patients and to investigate the underlying causes of lung conditions. He also has provided mentorship and support to early-career clinicians and scientists, increased grant application competitiveness and nurtured entrepreneurship and commercialization opportunities for faculty.

The Mass General Brigham Department of Medicine is an internationally renowned research powerhouse, with more than $700 million in research expenditures annually. Under Levy’s leadership, the department also has diversified its funding portfolio, including through innovative partnerships with industry.

Beyond his accomplishments in research and academic leadership, Levy has demonstrated a longstanding commitment to caring for underserved communities. For 25 years, he served as the volunteer medical director and a provider of care at the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans, and he currently serves on the board of Free Medical Group of Eastern Massachusetts, a nonprofit with the mission to provide health care to uninsured and underinsured patients.

Levy cares for patients at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, and he has helped to establish the Severe Asthma Clinical Center and the COVID Recovery Center at Mass General Brigham. His research focuses on how the body naturally turns off inflammation in healthy lungs after infection or injury. He and his team study specialized proresolving mediators produced by the body to stem inflammation and promote healing, with the goal of identifying new biological pathways and mechanisms that could lead to improved treatments that promote the resolution of inflammation. By understanding how these natural processes break down in inflammatory diseases of the lung such as asthma, pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome and long COVID, Levy aims to develop therapies that help restore healthy immune responses in the lungs.

He has been continuously funded by the NIH since 1993 and is widely published, having authored more than 300 peer-reviewed journal articles. He has more than 10 patents awarded or pending and is co-founder of Nocion Therapeutics, a biotech startup evaluating an investigational drug for its effectiveness in reducing chronic cough in phase 2 clinical trials in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

“I am honored to lead WashU Medicine at this important time, and to build on Dean Perlmutter’s remarkable achievements during the past 10-plus years,” Levy said. “I look forward to working with the Executive Faculty, faculty, trainees, students and staff as we chart our future course together, in collaboration with Chancellor Martin, university leaders and BJC HealthCare.”

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WashU Medicine faculty members Siyan “Stewart” Cao, MD, PhD, an assistant professor in gastroenterology, and Mary M. Mullen, MD, an assistant professor in gynecologic oncology, have received the Young Physician-Scientist Award from the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI).

The honor recognizes 50 physician-scientists nationwide who are early in their careers and have achieved accolades in their research. The annual award supports their involvement with three scientific associations — the ASCI, the Association of American Physicians and the American Physician Scientists Association — by offering leadership development workshops, panel discussions with ASCI members, virtual poster sessions and other career-enhancing activities.

The physician-scientists will be recognized in April at the associations’ joint annual meeting in Chicago.

Read more on the WashU Medicine website.

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Generous contributors to WashU, Noémi Neidorff and her late husband, Michael, established the professorship at WashU Medicine to honor Robert C. Packman, MD, a former WashU Medicine faculty member and senior vice president of medical affairs at St. Louis-based Centene Corp., where Michael Neidorff was chairman, president and chief executive officer. Wang was installed by Chancellor Andrew D. Martin and David H. Perlmutter, MD, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs, the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Distinguished Professor and the George and Carol Bauer Dean of WashU Medicine.

“The Neidorffs have long supported biomedical research at WashU, and I applaud their recognition that virology research — and talented virologists like David Wang — will be critical to helping our world confront everyday viral diseases as well as future pandemics,” said Chancellor Andrew D. Martin. “Robert Packman’s compassion and commitment to improving health care have inspired generations of WashU Medicine physicians. This professorship stands as a testament to his lasting impact.”

Wang developed state-of-the-art tools for sequencing and identifying viruses, which he has applied to find viruses associated with respiratory and intestinal disease and other common illnesses. Wang has also taken a novel approach to using the nematode worm C. elegans as a model organism. His approach led to the discovery of Orsay virus, a virus that infects nematodes but not humans, and enabled Wang to use C. elegans genetics to understand what was required for infection by Orsay virus. This revealed remarkable parallels to how viruses like poliovirus infect human cells.

“David Wang is redefining how we discover and understand viruses — work that sits at the intersection of basic science and public health,” Perlmutter said. “By developing powerful tools to identify novel viruses and reveal how they interact with their hosts, he has transformed our ability to respond to infectious disease threats as they evolve. Michael Neidorff had the vision to realize that better understanding of viruses and how the host responds to them — accomplished through basic science — was how WashU Medicine could continue to have a positive impact here in St. Louis and around the world.”

Wang’s focus on how novel viruses interact with humans and other host organisms has proven particularly applicable to public health. One of his most significant achievements is the development of the Virochip, a DNA-based viral detection tool that can identify well-known as well as novel viruses. This innovative technology became crucial in 2003, when it helped identify the virus responsible for the first SARS outbreak, showcasing its ability to address urgent public health crises. In addition, Wang studies the human virome, which is the community of viruses present in and on human bodies, and how this community changes with age and during illnesses.

Wang’s research also explores astroviruses, a family of viruses often associated with gastrointestinal illness. His work has revealed that these viruses, previously thought to infect only the digestive system, can also infect other tissues, including the brain. This unexpected finding has implications for understanding viral diseases and their potential impacts on neurological health.

Wang previously led one of 10 National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a coordinated network with collaborators in different regions across the globe where emerging and re-emerging infectious disease outbreaks have proven likely to occur.

“Discovery and collaboration epitomize David Wang’s work and his approach to virology,” said Sean Whelan, PhD, the Marvin A. Brennecke Distinguished Professor and head of the WashU Medicine Department of Molecular Microbiology. “Dr. Wang’s expertise in viral discovery, which is an area foundational to the very discipline of virology, has led to transformative advances in the field through the development of model systems and tools to study viral pathogens. His impact extends well beyond the lab through his leadership of an NIH-funded center for research, as well as his teaching and mentorship.”

A native of Los Angeles, Wang completed his undergraduate degree in chemistry at Stanford University in 1992 and earned his doctoral degree in biological chemistry from MIT in 1998. Wang joined WashU Medicine in 2004 with a joint appointment in molecular microbiology and pathology and immunology. In 2008, he won a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease Award, and he is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

About Michael and Noémi Neidorff

Michael Neidorff was chairman, president and CEO of Centene, a multinational health-care enterprise with more than 14 million members. He served on the boards of many regional and national arts, medical and educational organizations and was a former member of the National Council of the WashU Brown School. Michael Neidorff died in April 2022.

In 2019, during Neidorff’s tenure as Centene’s chairman, the company and WashU announced a partnership to advance research aimed at developing personalized approaches to preventing and treating Alzheimer’s disease, breast cancer, diabetes and obesity — conditions that affect millions worldwide. As part of the partnership, Centene provided $50 million for WashU Medicine’s Personalized Medicine Initiative, which supports research that tailors disease prevention and treatment based on patients’ genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors.

Noémi Neidorff is a classically trained musician and an active leader in the arts community. A native of Budapest, Hungary, Noémi Neidorff fled the country with her parents during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. She went on to become a classical pianist after earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Manhattan School of Music. She continued postgraduate studies at Columbia University. She and Michael served as co-chairs on the Kennedy Center’s International Committee on the Arts, and she was a past president of the National Symphony Orchestra’s National Trustees. She serves as a vice chairman on the board of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, on the board of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and on the executive committee of the Manhattan School of Music. She is the immediate past chairman of the board of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. She also played a significant role in founding the radio station Classic 107.3 FM, a station focused heavily on classical music and the arts.

The Neidorffs have long been impressed with the quality of care delivered by physicians at WashU Medicine. When they established the Robert C. Packman Professorship in virology, they also endowed the John S. Daniels Professorship in immunology. They previously have provided financial support to WashU Medicine for research into surgical treatments for pancreatic and gastrointestinal diseases, and to the Brown School for health disparities research. The Neidorffs, along with Centene, also endowed the Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean of the Brown School.

About Robert C. Packman

After Packman earned his bachelor’s and medical degrees from WashU, he completed specialty training in endocrinology at Duke University. He served as professor of clinical medicine at WashU Medicine for more than 35 years, specializing in endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism. After retiring from clinical practice, he joined Centene Corp., a young regional insurance company at the time, as chief medical officer. As the company grew, he was appointed senior vice president of medical affairs and continued in an advisory role until his retirement.

Packman was a dedicated and accomplished physician, devoted to the care of his patients and committed to improving the delivery of health care for all. As a former chief resident at Barnes Hospital, he designed and created the first modern edition of the Washington Manual of Medical Therapeutics, transforming what had been a handbook for in-house medical trainees into a portable reference for clinicians everywhere that continues to be one of the best-selling medical textbooks worldwide. He was actively involved in the care of patients during the early days of the AIDS epidemic and was known for his compassion.

Two professorships have been established in Packman’s name at WashU Medicine: the Neidorff Family and Robert C. Packman Professorship and the Robert C. Packman Professorship in virology. Packman died in September 2023.

Originally published on the WashU Medicine website

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