Jeff Lichtenhan, PhD, likes to know where and how things originate. That includes things like physiological responses of the auditory system – subtle sound or electrical signals that indicate auditory activity. Some of these signals have been used for decades to help diagnose hearing disorders, but in most cases we don’t fully understand their biological […]
While clinical activities at Barnes-Jewish Hospital have ground to a near halt due to COVID-19, the Department of Otolaryngology’s head and neck surgeons remain as busy as ever, treating cancer patients who can’t afford to wait. Some of those patients come from hundreds of miles away because their own hospitals shut down surgical efforts completely. […]
With COVID-19, things have clearly changed. Drs. J. Thomas Roland, Craig Buchman, and Jacques Herzog collaborate on a national level with various research endeavors and proposed a joint NYU – Wash U journal club. A joint journal club was an incredible opportunity to get opinions and new insights from leaders in our field. From NYU […]
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Washington University School of Medicine required all principal investigators and directors of research groups to put into place research contingency plans by March 23. The key feature of the research contingency plan was to define the “essential” and “important” functions of the lab and to build a contingency plan […]
Some of the biggest medical advances of the last few decades have been in diagnostic imaging, but how those images are viewed is pretty much the same as it was in 1950 – visual data displayed on a 2D flat screen. Augmented reality (AR), technology that superimposes digital information onto the physical world, has the […]
For more than 30 years, Mark Warchol, PhD, been interested in the development and repair of sensory hair cells of the auditory and vestibular systems, crucial to hearing and balance. That search has led the Warchol lab to identify an unlikely contributor to these processes – scavenger cells known to clean up debris from cell […]
Sensorineural hearing loss in humans, caused by degeneration of the sensory hair cells of the inner ear, is not a recoverable injury. Mammalian hair cells do not regenerate like many other cell types. A collaboration between Kevin Ohlemiller, PhD, and a private biotech company hopes to change that. In 2015, a new start-up, Frequency Therapeutics, […]
Faculty, research staff, and one resident presented their latest science at the 2020 Midwinter Meeting of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology (ARO). This annual meeting is the largest assembly of hearing scientists in the world and features primarily basic and applied science related to hearing, deafness and balance. Overall, 1,328 abstracts were submitted. The […]
Crafting furniture in his garage, Clint T. Allen, MD, carves away at oak and walnut, one day creating cabinets or, on another, maybe a countertop for his new bar. An otolaryngologist who trained at Washington University School of Medicine, Allen is like many of his fellow surgeons: he enjoys using sharp tools. Yet when it […]
Medical students working in research labs in the Department of Otolaryngology recently presented and earned recognition at the Triological Society’s Combined Sections Meeting, a national conference that features all otolaryngology specialties. Erik Nakken (Washington University School of Medicine) and Smrithi Chidambaram (St. Louis University School of Medicine) scored first place for their poster presentation, Sociodemographic […]