Category: News

New screening platform accelerates search for Rett syndrome treatments and reveals new disease mechanisms

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At a Glance: Developing treatments for rare genetic disorders, such as Rett syndrome, is notoriously difficult, often requiring years of research and significant financial investment. Researchers at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin–Madison have developed a new drug screening platform for Rett syndrome that could help accelerate the search for potential therapies while uncovering new …

Remembering Dan Bier, former director of the Waisman Center University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities

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by Teresa Palumbo Dan Bier, former associate director of the Waisman Center and University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, passed away on October 3. He was 78. For more than four decades, Dan worked to bridge research, services, training, and advocacy to improve the daily lives of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and …

Building the Waisman Center’s window to the world: Website manager Linda Rowley retires after more than 30 years of keeping the center online

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Rowley, who managed the Waisman Center website for 30 years, retired this July, but not before ensuring the website was set up for its most recent update.

‘We built a brain roadmap for each person’: New AI-driven tools help decode Alzheimer’s disease at the cellular level

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Identifying the cells connected with Alzheimer’s symptoms could result in new treatments for the disease. By Emily Leclerc and Charlene N. Rivera-Bonet Alzheimer’s disease is complex, presenting and progressing in so many different ways in individual patients that it’s difficult for scientists to study. Now, researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have developed AI-driven bioinformatics …

Neighborhood disadvantage is associated with differences in early brain development

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The study highlights associations between neighborhood disadvantage and an MRI measure of myelin maturation, a marker of brain development, across infancy and childhood.

RNA-binding protein identified as key regulator of brain development

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A new Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison study has identified a critical regulator of this early process of cell fate called FXR1, a protein that binds RNA to regulate the abundance of key genes.

First drug to treat Alexander disease approved by the FDA after three decades of research at UW–Madison

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Waisman Center launches program for autistic adults, targeting care gap after childhood

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From The Daily Cardinal

New drug shows promise for treating Down syndrome-related brain changes

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Individuals with Down syndrome have differences in how their brains form that cause intellectual disability. Down syndrome or trisomy 21 is the most common genetic cause of intellectual and developmental disability and is caused by the triplication of chromosome 21.

Waisman investigators receive NIH funding to optimize the use of brain organoids in research

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A newly funded project will combine the expertise of four Waisman Center investigators to develop advanced machine learning methods for studying brain organoids, three-dimensional cell clusters grown from stem cells that closely mimic key aspects of human brain development.