To the naked eye, they look like tiny blobs free floating in a pink liquid. Under a light microscope, they look similar. But organoids, a 3-D mini version of an organ grown in a lab, may contain invaluable information about how the human brain develops.
iPSC
Waisman Center welcomes new affiliated investigator Justin Wolter
By Emily Leclerc, Waisman Science Writer The Waisman Center welcomes a new affiliated investigator Justin Wolter, PhD, assistant professor of medical genetics. Wolter comes to Waisman and UW-Madison from the University of North Carolina at …
Timothy M. Gomez, PhD – Slide of the Week
Photoreceptors (PRs) are the primary visual sensory cells, and their loss leads to blindness that is currently incurable. Although cell replacement therapy holds promise, success is hindered by our limited understanding of PR axon growth during development and regeneration.
Masatoshi Suzuki, DVM, PhD – Slide of the Week
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neuromuscular disease in which patients gradually become paralyzed due to loss of motor function. Many genetically inheritable mutations have been linked to ALS; however, the majority of ALS patients are considered sporadic.
Stem cell project to create new model to study brain development and Down syndrome
Waisman Center researchers are creating a new approach to study how changes to brain development in the womb result in intellectual disability in people with Down syndrome.
Masatoshi Suzuki, DVM, PhD – Slide of the Week
Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) present exciting opportunities to study disease processes in vitro. Advances in bioengineering allow us to differentiate cells in a system more relevant to their native environment in order to observe naturally occurring phenomena.
May is ALS awareness month
May is #ALSAwarenessMonth and Waisman investigator Su-Chun Zhang, MD, PhD, uses stem cells to uncover the cause of ALS with the hope of developing treatments and therapies.
New gene editing tool driving stem cell services and discovery
A new gene editing service provides researchers on campus with genetically engineered pluripotent stem cell lines derived using CRISPR-Cas9. The UW-Madison iPSC Reprogramming and Human Stem Cell Gene Editing Service is co-operated by the Waisman …
Randy Ashton, PhD – Slide of the Week
Transplantation of human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC)-derived neurons into chick embryos is an established preliminary assay to evaluate engraftment potential. Yet, with recent advances in deriving diverse human neuronal subtypes, optimizing and standardizing such transplantation methodology for specific subtypes at their correlated anatomical sites is still required.
Masatoshi Suzuki, DVM, PhD – Slide of the Week
Human induced-pluripotent stem cells are a promising resource for propagation of myogenic progenitors. Our group recently reported a unique protocol for the derivation of myogenic progenitors directly (without genetic modification) from human pluripotent cells using free-floating spherical culture.