Stem cells | | News | UW-Madison

July 14, 2014

The ability to reliably and safely make in the laboratory all of the different types of cells in human blood is one key step closer to reality. Writing today (July 14, 2014) in the journal Nature Communications, a group led by University of WisconsinMadison stem cell researcher Igor Slukvin reports the discovery of two genetic programs responsible for taking blank-slate stem cells and turning them into both red and the array of white cells that make up human blood.

World stem cell leaders will converge on Promega's BioPharmaceutical Technology Center in Fitchburg on April 30 for the 9th Annual Wisconsin Stem Cell Symposium: From Stem Cells to Blood.

Desperate patients are easy prey for unscrupulous clinics offering untested and risky stem cell treatments, says law and bioethics Professor Alta Charo of the University of WisconsinMadison, who is studying "stem cell tourism."

As stem cells continue their gradual transition from the lab to the clinic, a research group at the University of WisconsinMadison has discovered a new way to make large concentrations of skeletal muscle cells and muscle progenitors from human stem cells.

A team of University of WisconsinMadison researchers has induced human embryonic stem cells (hESC) to differentiate toward pure-population, mature heart muscle cells, or cardiomyocytes.

A team of engineers at the University of WisconsinMadison has created a process to improve the creation of synthetic neural stem cells for use in central nervous system research.

University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) researchers have discovered a very early regulatory event that controls the production of blood stem cells and the adult blood system.

With last Friday's retirement of longtime University Research Park Director Mark Bugher, associate director Greg Hyer is assuming the role of interim director of the successful, 260-acre park on the West Side of Madison.

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 them a difficult source of therapeutics.

What if you could travel back in time 3 billion years, and take a breath? What would earths air smell like? Deeply stinky, according to Brooke Norsted, an outreach specialist for the University of WisconsinMadison Geology Museum.

Rebecca Blank arriving, Kevin Reilly leaving. Budget cuts and tuition freezes. Even if you were vacationing and unplugged over the summer, it was hard to miss these headlines. But you can be excused for not being on top of everything that happened on campus while you were away.

Using human pluripotent stem cells and DNA-cutting protein from meningitis bacteria, researchers from the Morgridge Institute for Research and Northwestern University have created an efficient way to target and repair defective genes.

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.

MADISON, Wis. Transplantation of human stem cells in an experiment conducted at the University of WisconsinMadison improved survival and muscle function in rats used to model ALS, a nerve disease that destroys nerve control of muscles, causing death by respiratory failure.

In new research published this week, Anita Bhattacharyya, a neuroscientist at the Waisman Center at the University of WisconsinMadison, reports on brain cells that were grown from skin cells of individuals with Down syndrome.

The Greater Milwaukee Foundation has chosen two University of WisconsinMadison researchers for 2013 Shaw Scientist Awards.

A University of WisconsinMadison 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.

The drug trial is not off to an auspicious start. The cells are not cooperating.

For the first time, human embryonic stem cells have been transformed into nerve cells that helped mice regain the ability to learn and remember.

When it comes to delivering genes to living human tissue, the odds of success come down the molecule. The entire therapy - including the tools used to bring new genetic material into a cell - must have predictable effects.

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Stem cells | | News | UW-Madison