About Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
Washington University School of Medicine is a leading medical research, teaching and patient care institution, currently ranked third in nation by U.S. News & World Report. The medical school’s physicians are on staff at Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals. Both are consistently ranked among the nation’s best by U.S. News & World Report.
Washington University Physicians are full-time faculty at the School of Medicine. The clinical practice group — one of the five largest academic clinical practices in the nation — is made up of nearly 1,150 university-employed physicians representing more than 50 specialties and subspecialties in medicine and surgery. In fiscal 2009, Washington University Physicians provided comprehensive care to adults and children at more than 800,000 outpatient visits.
Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital are also home to the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center. Siteman is the only cancer center in Missouri and within a 240-mile radius of St. Louis to hold the prestigious Comprehensive Cancer Center designation from the National Cancer Institute and membership in the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. Siteman offers the expertise of more than 350 Washington University research scientists and physicians who provide care for nearly 8,000 newly diagnosed cancer patients each year.
Grants and contracts totaling more than $484 million supported faculty research efforts at the School of Medicine during the 2009 fiscal year. Substantial additional support was provided directly to faculty investigators by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Gifts and grants from private sources, including alumni, individuals, foundations, corporations and other organizations totaled $96.3 million.
Through the years, 17 Nobel laureates have been associated with the School of Medicine. Currently, 14 faculty members belong to the National Academy of Sciences and 26 are members of the Academy’s Institute of Medicine.
Washington University School of Medicine is consistently ranked first in the nation in student selectivity, a measurement of student undergraduate grade-point averages and scores on medical school entrance exams.
For more information, medicine.wustl.edu
The Genome Center
Washington University’s Genome Center is a world leader in high-speed, large-scale sequencing of genomes, from primitive bacteria to complex humans. The Center played a key role in the Human Genome Project, contributing 25 percent of the finished sequence. Since its inception, the Center has received more than $750 million in research funding.
Scientists at Washington University’s Genome Center pioneered whole-genome sequencing of cancer patients’ genomes. In 2008, they became the first to decode the complete genome of a cancer patient – a woman with leukemia – and trace her disease to its genetic roots. To date, they have sequenced the genomes of 60 additional cancer patients, including those with breast, lung and ovarian tumors and glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor. These studies have identified intriguing and unexpected genetic connections between patients with different types of cancer that likely would not have been discovered using conventional approaches.
The Center currently receives substantial funding from the National Institutes of Health for research that includes the Cancer Genome Atlas Project, to sequence the DNA of adult cancer patients and their tumors to identify the genetic changes important to cancer; the Human Microbiome Project, to sequence the genomes of bacteria involved in human health and disease; and the 1,000 Genomes Project, to catalog the immense human variation written into the genetic code. For more information, genome.wustl.edu.
