Advancing knowledge of human development, developmental disabilities, and neurodegenerative diseases.
"The novelty is that this is a combined cell and gene therapy approach," Suzuki explains, noting that the bone marrow stem cells on their own had a modest effect, possibly by releasing their own protective factors. "But only when we engineered the cells to release GDNF did we see a significant improvement. The cells turned out to be quite an important component. It's this combination of cells and drug delivery that seems to be so effective."
With the help of a $7.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers will explore the potential of stem cells and natural growth factors to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
In a study that demonstrates the promise of cell-based therapies for diseases that have proved intractable to modern medicine, a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has shown it is possible to rescue the dying neurons characteristic of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal neuromuscular disorder also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have discovered how a defect in a single master gene disrupts the process by which several genes interact to create myelin, a fatty coating that covers nerve cells and increases the speed and reliability of their electrical signals.
A brain afflicted by severe Alzheimer's disease is a sad sight, a wreck of tangled neural connections and organic rubble as the lingering evidence of a fierce internal battle.
The story that Sandra Magana tells her social work classes is a tale of challenges and of how people rise to them.
One of the great challenges for treating Parkinson's diseases and other neurodegenerative disorders is getting medicine to the right place in the brain.
Boosting levels of two critical proteins that normally shut down during Huntington's disease, researchers at UW-Madison and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have cured fruit flies of the genetic, neurodegenerative condition.
Unveiling a delivery method that may one day help surgeons treat the deadly neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), researchers at the UW-Madison have inserted engineered human stem cells into the spinal cords of ALS-afflicted rats.
Michael J. Fox visited the Waisman Center on Tuesday, February 1 to tour the stem cell research laboratories of Clive Svendsen and Su-Chun Zhang, as well as other components of the center's translational research tower, including the Waisman Clinical BioManufacturing Facility and the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior. Fox was accompanied by Wisconsin Governor James Doyle.
