Washington University School of Medicine

Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) is the medical school of Washington University in St. Louis, a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1891, the School of Medicine shares a campus with Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center, and Central Institute for the Deaf. It has consistently ranked among the top medical schools in the United States in terms of the number/amount of research grants/funding awarded by the National Institutes of Health, among other measures.
The clinical service is provided by Washington University Physicians, a comprehensive medical and surgical practice providing treatment in more than 75 medical specialties. Washington University Physicians are the medical staff of the two teaching hospitals – Barnes-Jewish Hospital and St. Louis Children's Hospital. They also provide inpatient and outpatient care at the St. Louis Veteran's Administration Hospital, hospitals in the BJC HealthCare system and 35 other office locations throughout the greater St Louis region.
History
Medical classes were first held at Washington University in 1891 after the St. Louis Medical College decided to affiliate with the University, establishing a Medical Department. Robert S. Brookings, a University benefactor from its earliest days, devoted much of his work and philanthropy to Washington University and made the improvement of the Medical Department one of his primary objectives. This especially became a cause for concern after an early 1900s Carnegie Foundation report derided the organization and quality of the Medical Department.
Following a trend in medical education across the country, research and the creation of new knowledge became a stated objective in a 1906 course catalog for the medical department. For Brookings and the University, incorporating the Medical Department into a separate School of Medicine seemed to be the next logical step. This process began in 1914 when facilities were moved to their current location in St. Louis's Central West End neighborhood in 1914, and was completed in 1918 with the official naming of the School of Medicine. The first female faculty member seems to have been biochemist and physiologist Ethel Ronzoni Bishop, who became an assistant professor in 1923.
The Medical School began its escalation from regional renown in the 1940s, a decade when two groups of faculty members received Nobel Prizes, in 1944 and 1947. In 1950, a Cancer Research Building was completed, the first major addition to the School of Medicine since its 1914 move and one of several buildings added in the decade. In the 1960s the School of Medicine diversified its student body, graduating its first African-American student and substantially increasing the percentage of graduating students who are female to nearly half.
In March 2020, Washington University School of Medicine announced the construction of a new $616 million, 11-story, 609,000-square-foot neuroscience research building which will sit at the eastern edge of the Medical Campus in the Cortex Innovation Community. Construction of the building is to finish in 2023.
Campus
Washington University Medical Center comprises 164 acres (0.5 km²) spread over about 17 city blocks, located along the eastern edge of Forest Park within the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis. Barnes-Jewish Hospital and St. Louis Children's Hospital, part of BJC HealthCare, the teaching hospitals affiliated with the School of Medicine, are also located within the medical complex. Many of the buildings are connected via sky bridges and corridors. As of 2008, the School of Medicine occupies over in the complex.
Washington University and BJC HealthCare have taken on many joint venture projects since their original collaboration in the 1910s. One is the Center for Advanced Medicine, which houses the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center and was completed in December 2001. At , it is one of the largest buildings in the complex.
The complex has several especially large buildings. In 2007, construction began on the BJC Institutes of Health, of which Washington University's Medical School occupies several floors. It is the largest building constructed on Washington University's campus. Called the BJC Institute of Health at Washington University, it houses the University's BioMed 21 Research Initiative, five interdisciplinary research centers, laboratories, and additional space for The Genome Center.
Prominent buildings, centers, and spaces at the medical campus includes Barnes-Jewish Hospital, the Central Institute for the Deaf, St. Louis Children's Hospital, Rehabilitation Institute of Saint Louis, Siteman Cancer Center, Center for Advanced Medicine, Charles F. Knight Emergency and Trauma Center, and the Eric P. Newman Education Center.
The complex is accessible via the Central West End MetroLink station, which provides transportation to the rest of Washington University's campuses.
Reputation and rankings
Its major teaching hospital, Barnes Jewish Hospital was ranked #11 in the United States in 2022-2023 by U.S. News & World Report.
In the 2023-2024 U.S. News & World Report rankings, Washington University School of Medicine was ranked fifth in the nation among medical schools for research. In its graduate school specialties, according to U.S. News for 2023-2024, it was ranked #6 in audiology, #8 in radiology, #10 in surgery, and #10 in obstetrics and gynaecology.
Affiliated research institutions
Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC) - founded in 1985, the mission of the ADRC is to promote collaborative research in the treatment and assessment of Alzheimer's disease. The center also provides a training environment for postdoctoral fellows, students in nursing, social work and medicine, along with residents in geriatrics, psychiatry and neurology.
BioMed 21 - started in 2003, BioMed 21 is an interdisciplinary research center linking life sciences and medical education throughout Washington University. To be housed in a 700,000-square-foot (65,000 m2) facility in the Medical Complex to be named the BJC Institute of Health at Washington University, BioMed 21 includes five Interdisciplinary Research Centers:
Center for Cancer Genomics
Center for the Investigation of Membrane Excitability Disorders
Center for Women's Infectious Disease Research
Hope Center Program on Protein Folding and Neurodegeneration
Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Diabetic Cardiovascular Disease
Central Institute for the Deaf - combines education, research and clinical and community service to benefit individuals who are deaf and hearing-impaired. Audiologists, teachers and scientists serve as graduate program faculty and Washington University graduate students gain experience in real-world situations.
Hope Center for Neurological Disorders - formed by a collaborative alliance between Washington University School of Medicine and Hope Happens, a St. Louis-based non-profit formerly known as ALS Hope, its mission is to improve the lives of people with neurological disorders (particularly ALS, Alzheimer's Disease, brain and spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, and stroke) by discovering the fundamental mechanisms of neurodegeneration and translating this knowledge into new methods for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.
Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology - serves as the Department of Radiology for the Washington University School of Medicine. Institute physicians and scientists are faculty members of the School of Medicine, and physicians are on the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish Hospital and St. Louis Children's Hospital. Multidisciplinary research training programs combine both clinical and basic research.
McDonnell Genome Institute - an organization focusing on genomics research. The Institute played a major role in the Human Genome Project, to which it contributed 25% of the finished sequence, and is currently a major participant in both The Cancer Genome Atlas and the 1000 Genomes Project.
Faculty
18 Nobel laureates have been associated with the School of Medicine.
12 faculty members are fellows of the National Academy of Sciences; 30 belong to the Institute of Medicine.
92 faculty members hold individual career development awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
59 faculty members hold career development awards from non-federal agencies.
14 faculty members have MERIT status, a special recognition given by the National Institutes of Health that provides long-term, uninterrupted financial support to investigators.
Six faculty members are Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators.
Nobel laureates
Physiology or Medicine
1943: Edward A. Doisy (1893–1986), Faculty of Medicine, 1919–1923
1944: Joseph Erlanger (1874–1965), Chairman, Department of Physiology 1910–1946
1944: Herbert Gasser (1888–1963), Faculty of Medicine, 1916–1931
1947: Carl F. Cori (1896–1984), Faculty of Medicine 1931–1984
1947: Gerty T. Cori (1896–1957), Faculty of Medicine 1931–1957
1959: Arthur Kornberg, Chairman, Department of Microbiology, 1952–1959
1959: Severo Ochoa, Faculty of Medicine 1940–1942
1969: Alfred Hershey (1908–1997), Faculty of Medicine 1934–1950
1971: Earl Sutherland (1915–1974), M.D. 42, Resident in Internal Medicine 1943–1945, Faculty of Medicine, 1945–1953
1974: Christian de Duve, Faculty of Medicine 1946–1947
1978: Daniel Nathans (1928–1999), M.D. 54
1978: Hamilton O. Smith, Washington University Medical Service 1956–1957
1980: George D. Snell, Faculty of Arts and Sciences 1933–1934
1986: Stanley Cohen, Faculty of Arts and Sciences 1953–1959
1986: Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909–2012), Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 1948–1977
1992: Edwin G. Krebs, M.D. 43, Resident in Internal Medicine and then a Research Fellow in Biological Chemistry 1945–1948
1998: Robert F. Furchgott, Ph.D. Faculty of Medicine, 1949–1956
2020: Charles M. Rice, Ph.D. Faculty of Medicine, 1986-2001
Chemistry
1970: Luis F. Leloir, Faculty of Medicine 1944
1980: Paul Berg, Faculty of Medicine 1954–1959
2012: Brian Kobilka, Resident in Internal Medicine, 1981–1984
Notable alumni
Alexis F. Hartmann, MD '21; pediatrician, biochemist and former professor of pediatrics
Faye Cashatt Lewis, MD '21; first woman to receive an M.D. from Washington University School of Medicine
Ewald W. Busse, MD '42; psychiatrist and dean of Duke University School of medicine
Earl Sutherland, MD '42; biochemist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Edwin G. Krebs, MD '43; biochemist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
David W. Talmage, MD '44; immunologist
Helen Elizabeth Nash, MD, PhD '45; pediatrician; dean of minority affairs at Washington University School of Medicine
Ernst Wynder, MD '50; linked smoking with lung cancer
Daniel Nathans, MD '54; microbiologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and National Medal of Science
James E. Darnell Jr., MD '55; molecular biologist and winner of the National Medal of Science
Selna Kaplan, MD '55; pediatric endocrinologist
Thomas Hornbein, MD '56; mountaineer and chairman of anesthesiology at University of Washington School of Medicine
Clay Armstrong, MD '60; physiologist and winner of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research for describing K+ channels
Floyd E. Bloom, MD '60; chairman emeritus of neuropharmacology at Scripps Research Institute and editor-in-chief of Science
Pedro Cuatrecasas, MD '62; inventor of affinity chromatography and winner of the Wolf Prize in Medicine
C. Garrison Fathman, MD '69; clinical immunologist
Philip O. Alderson, MD '70; dean of Saint Louis University School of Medicine
Jonathan Mann, MD '74; head of the World Health Organization global AIDS program
Susan Kolb, MD '79, medical doctor and author
Dan R. Littman, MD, PhD '80; immunologist, HHMI investigator, member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine
Eric D. Green, MD, PhD '87, HS '91; director of the NHGRI
Other associated hospitals
St. Louis Children's Hospital
Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center
Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital
Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital
Christian Hospital
Northwest HealthCare
Metropolitan St. Louis Psychiatric Center
Missouri Baptist Medical Center
St. Louis Shriner's Hospital
See also
Washington Manual of Medical Therapeutics
References
External links
Medical schools in Missouri
School of Medicine
Universities and colleges established in 1891
Washington University in St. Louis campus
1891 establishments in Missouri
Central West End, St. Louis