Advancing knowledge of human development, developmental disabilities, and neurodegenerative diseases.
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.
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.
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.
At a Glance A newly discovered protein marker on the surface of a retinal cell could help pave the way for cell therapies that restore vision in people with currently incurable forms of blindness. Research in the lab of Waisman investigator David Gamm, MD, PhD, professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the University of …
A University of Wisconsin–Madison interdisciplinary team led by Waisman Center investigator Xinyu Zhao, PhD, has received funding through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF)-supported Igniting Interdisciplinary Innovation (I³) initiative to develop new methods for manufacturing and analyzing human neural organoids, miniature three-dimensional models of the human brain grown from stem cells. This multidisciplinary collaborative project, “Scalable Manufacturing and …
After more than two decades at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin and several first-in-the-world stem cell scientific breakthroughs, Su-Chun Zhang, MD, PhD, professor of neuroscience and neurology, is retiring. He came to the Waisman Center in 2001 as part of the Translational Research-Neurodegenerative Diseases Cluster. Zhang anchored Waisman’s stem cell research program and has …
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.
[uw-reusable-content id=’29795′] Natasha Méndez Albelo, graduate student in the lab of Waisman investigator Xinyu Zhao, PhD, was awarded the competitive SCRMC Graduate Training Award from the UW–Madison Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center. This award recognizes and provides support and unique training opportunities to promising graduate students doing research in stem cell and regenerative medicine. …
It is well established that brain development looks different for individuals with Down syndrome, but how early do these differences appear?
In a lab near UW Hospital, Megan Jandy grows stem cells from people with Down syndrome — 10 batches of cells, most in three-dimensional clusters, each batch featuring one group with the extra chromosome that causes the disorder and one group without it.
