Advancing knowledge of human development, developmental disabilities, and neurodegenerative diseases.
David Tenenbaum – University Communications Developing a new drug takes enormous amounts of time, money and skill, but the bar is even higher for a promising stem-cell therapy. Many types of cells derived from these ultra-flexible parent cells are moving toward the market, but the very quality that makes stem cells so valuable also makes …
Neil Heinen, WISC-TV editorial director, recently sat down with Marsha R. Mailick, PhD, Waisman Center Director, along with Anita Bhattacharyya, PhD, Senior Scientist and Maria Stanley, MD, Waisman Center Clinics Medical Director, to discuss the breadth of research and service that takes place at the Waisman Center. The discussion also highlighted the Waisman Center’s 40th …
Many scientists use animals to model human diseases. Mice can be obese or display symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Rats get Alzheimer's and diabetes. But animal models are seldom perfect, and so scientists are looking at a relatively new type of stem cell, called the induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS cell), that can be grown into specialized cells that become useful models for human disease.
But the specks in the Petri dishes were the result of years of research in the laboratory of David Gamm, an ophthalmologist at the UW’s Waisman Center. And as members of the Reese family carefully cradled the dishes, they held the future of their descendants’ eyesight in their hands.
Down syndrome, the most common genetic form of intellectual disability, results from an extra copy of one chromosome. Although people with Down syndrome experience intellectual difficulties and other problems, scientists have had trouble identifying why that extra chromosome causes such widespread effects.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison research group has converted skin cells from people and monkeys into a cell that can form a wide variety of nervous-system cells -- without passing through the do-it-all stage called the induced pluripotent stem cell, or iPSC.
For the first time, human embryonic stem cells have been transformed into nerve cells that helped mice regain the ability to learn and remember. A study at UW–Madison is the first to show that human stem cells can successfully implant themselves in the brain and then heal neurological deficits, says senior author Su-Chun Zhang, a professor of neuroscience and neurology.
For the first time, scientists have transplanted neural cells derived from a monkey’s skin into its brain and watched the cells develop into several types of mature brain cells, according to the authors of a new study in Cell Reports. After six months, the cells looked entirely normal, and were only detectable because they initially were tagged with a fluorescent protein. Because the cells were derived from adult cells in each monkey’s skin, the experiment is a proof-of-principle for the concept of personalized medicine, where treatments are designed for each individual.
The ultimate cause of hearing loss is usually found in the tiny hair cells that play the crucial role of converting sound waves into nerve impulses for delivery to the brain.
For the first time, Wisconsin researchers have taken skin from patients and, using induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology, turned them into a laboratory model for an inherited type of macular degeneration.
