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F. Sessions Cole, III, MD, is a neonatologist who is the Park J. White, MD, Professor of Pediatrics, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Children’s Health, Executive Vice Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics, and Interim Chief of the Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonary Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine.

Dr. Cole is also known for his remarkable dedication as a clinician, researcher and educator. He has been recognized by his peers in Best Doctors in America and America’s Top Doctors, chosen as the recipient of numerous teaching awards by his medical students and residents, and is a National Institutes of Health

(NIH)-funded investigator whose research has provided a better understanding of the genetic basis of rare, inherited diseases. For example, his findings have made him one of the world’s leading authorities on the genetic causes of respiratory distress in newborns.

Dr. Cole received his bachelor’s degree from Amherst College in 1969 and graduated from Yale Medical School in 1973. He completed his internship and residency at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School and served as a General Medical Officer in the United States Public Health Service.

He was a fellow in neonatology at The Joint Program in Neonatology/Harvard Medical School (Boston Children’s Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Beth Israel Hospital) before becoming Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School in 1982. In 1986, he joined the Washington University School of Medicine as Associate Professor and Director of the Division of Newborn Medicine.

He was promoted to professor in 1989 and named vice chairman of the department in 1995.

Dr. Cole sees newborn patients while they are in the St. Louis Children’s Hospital neonatal intensive care unit. Dr. Cole is consistently recognized in “The Best Doctors in America” list.

Dr. Cole is our main contact for any 9p minus family, doctor, etc who has a medical question or needs a medical contact. You may email him anytime as he is very good at getting back to you. He also has a wonderful administrator who helps him as well.

http://www.stlouischildrens.org/our-services/physicians/f-sessions-cole-md#

Dr. Shinawi is a clinical genetic specialist. He concentrates his practice on genetic skeletal dysplasia, congenital malformation syndrome, chromosomal disorders, autistic spectrum disorders, bone diseases, metabolic disorders, inherited disorders, and microarray abnormalities.

Dr. Shinawi joined the division of genetics and genomic medicine at St. Louis Children’s Hospital in September 2009. He is Board certified in Clinical Genetics and Medical Biochemical Genetics. His special interests are in genomics and genomic disorders, cytogenetic abnormalities, microarray technology, skeletal dysplasia, the genetic basis of autism, and metabolic conditions. He is using reverse genomics to characterize the phenotypes of genomic disorders with special focus on 16p11.2 rearrangements. He is working to develop novel methods for detection of metabolic conditions. Dr. Shinawi is a co-director of the Women and Infants’ Health Specimen Consortium (WIHSC) and am investigating metabolomics and feto-maternal interaction during pregnancy.

http://www.stlouischildrens.org/our-services/physicians/marwan-shinawi-md

Training

Residency, St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Washington University in St. Louis, 2011 – 2014

Chief Residency, St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Washington University in St. Louis, 2014 – 2015

Licensure and Board Certification

American Board of Pediatrics , 2014

MO, State Medical License , 2014

Jeffrey Milbrandt, MD, PhD, the James S. McDonnell Professor of Genetics and head of the Department of Genetics, leads faculty members widely recognized for their work to uncover fundamental genetic mechanisms that underlie biological processes and disease. Milbrandt, who applies genetic tools and genomic technologies to his own studies, has devoted his career to Washington University. His research focuses on neuronal signaling cascades in an effort to understand how specialized nerve cells called glial

cells contribute to nerve regeneration after injury .In a longstanding collaboration with Eugene Johnson Jr., PhD, professor of neurology, Milbrandt’s laboratory discovered a family of growth factors that promote neuronal survival. One member of this family, neurturin, is being evaluated in clinical trials in patients with Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Milbrandt’s studies have also pointed to the vulnerability of axons,

which transmit signals between nerve cells, in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Alzheimer’s. Recently, he has discovered several molecules that can protect axons from degenerating after an injury. These include enzymes, a protein thought to extend life called SIRT1 and resveratrol, a minor ingredient in red wine. He is now working with biotech

companies to test therapies that combine growth factors with axonal protective agents as a potential treatment for neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr. Milbrandt was also actively involved in the establishment of the Hope Center for Neurological Disorders, a collaboration that pools the intellectual and financial resources of Washington University and Hope Happens for Neurological Disorders. The center is dedicated to supporting and accelerating research that uncovers molecular mechanisms that contribute to neurodegenerative diseases and uses these discoveries to develop new treatments for diseases.

Rob Mitra, PhD, is the Alvin Goldfarb Professor of Computational Biology in the Department of Genetics and the Edison Family Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at Washington University in St. Louis. He received his BS, MS and PhD from MIT. His current research interests are focused on

understanding how transcription factors achieve their in vivo specificities, developing new genomic technologies, and applying these to understand disease processes.

Patricia Dickson, MD, is the Centennial Professor of Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine. She also is professor of genetics and chief of the Division of Genetics and Genomic Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics. She earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and her medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She completed an internship and residency at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a Los Angeles County hospital affiliated with UCLA and the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute. She served as chief resident at the medical center and completed her medical genetics training in the UCLA Intercampus Medical Genetics Training

Program. Dr. Dickson’s research focuses on pathogenesis and novel therapy development for central nervous system disease due to the genetic disease mucopolysaccharidosis. She has been successful in bringing some of these therapies to clinical trials. To date. Dr. Dickson’s work has led to 60 publications and has been cited more than 1,000 times. Her honors include the National Institutes of Health National Research Service Award Fellowship and the Richard B. Weitzman Memorial Award for Meritorious Research. She is a diplomate of the American Board of Pediatrics and the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics.

Dr. Tychele Turner is a geneticist/genomicist with a deep interest in understanding the genetic architecture of human disease. Dr. Turner completed her undergraduate training in Genomics and Molecular Genetics at Michigan State University followed by graduate work at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where she received her Ph.D. in Human Genetics and Molecular Biology under the mentorship of Dr. Aravinda Chakravarti. During graduate work, Dr. Turner focused on the

genetics of autism in females. Dr. Turner performed her postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Dr. Evan Eichler in the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. There she performed large-scale whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing analyses to discover risk factors for autism.

Currently, Dr. Turner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. She is actively involved in the 9p project and is focused on breakpoint resolution and genotype/phenotype correlations.