Jianhua Zhang, PhD, senior scientist, Cardiovascular Medicine, first learned about Marie Curie’s story and discoveries while studying chemistry in middle school. Years later, Dr. Zhang’s work is still guided by a quote from Curie: “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
“That’s my whole motivation, passion and interest in doing research, particularly now in the era of stem cell research,” said Dr. Zhang.
Every summer since 2007, students from some of the smallest high schools in Wisconsin have descended on the Morgridge Institute for Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for some big-time scientific immersion. The Morgridge Rural Summer Science …
Medicine is rapidly approaching a great advance that will augment or replace drugs with human cells for treating a range of intractable conditions, an expert in cell therapy told the Wisconsin Technology Council on June …
New insights into the molecular machinations behind fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited intellectual disability, may help researchers develop potential therapies. Fragile X is a genetic condition that affects one in 4,000 males and …
SCRMC member Jing Zhang, PhD, of the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, has been named the new Centennial Professor of Oncology. This professorship, endowed through the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, …
SCRMC faculty members Dr. Christian Capitini and Dr. Peiman Hematti treat a patient at UW Health’s American Family Children’s Hospital with her own, genetically modified immune cells. The first gene therapy approved in the United States, CAR T therapy is being explored as a treatment for blood cancers that do not respond well to chemotherapy. – By David Wahlberg for the Wisconsin State Journal.
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health have used human stem cells to make blood-forming cells and demonstrated that they can function as lymphoid precursors, or the earliest cells from which various immune cells arise. These findings may be helpful for treating a variety of blood cancers, according to Igor Slukvin, MD, PhD, SCRMC faculty member, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and lead scientist of the research studies.
Among those with support, Krishanu Saha, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at WID and faculty member of the SCRMC, studies human cell engineering, including CRISPR gene editing and epigenetic reprogramming. Saha is the lead investigator on a project to generate new CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tools capable of making precise edits to new types of tissues, expanding the impact of genomic medicine to treat new diseases. He is also a co-PI on a project to establish advanced gene editing technologies on campus to accelerate researchers’ ability to create genetically modified animal models of human disease.
Twenty years ago this fall, a team of scientists led by James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison published the first paper describing successful derivation of human embryonic stem cells.
Nov. 6, 2018 will mark the 20th anniversary of publication of “Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Derived from Human Blastocysts.” The seminal paper, published in the journal Science, documented a breakthrough that occurred when researchers, led by James (Jamie) Thomson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, developed a technique to isolate and grow human embryonic stem cells in cell culture.