A Madison-Milwaukee scientific partnership is powering an effort to better understand the complicated mechanics of human vision.
Author: Brian Mattmiller
Have microscope, will travel: New tech project links Madison, Boston scientists
An invention designed to transform how and where high-powered research microscopes are deployed — and who gets to use them — will make its way from Madison this spring to the fertile biology labs of greater Boston.
Collaboration leads to ‘dream’ of artery bank
Just as blood banks are essential to medicine, the Thomson Lab hopes to see the advent of artery banks that give surgeons a better, readily available material to replace diseased arteries. The lab is using pluripotent stem cells to grow the cellular building blocks of the artery — endothelial and smooth muscle cells — and coax them into assembling into arteries that can grow and thrive in a majority of patients.
Turning T cells into better cancer assassins
Alexandra Walsh, an assistant scientist in the lab of Morgridge medical engineer Melissa Skala, is leading a project to use non-invasive fluorescence imaging to identify and sort T cells for use in cancer immunotherapy treatments. The technology won a 2018 Innovation Award from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
Imaging the zebrafish, one cell at a time
A new imaging project at the Morgridge Institute for Research might be the biology equivalent of a 19th century expressionist painting. Think Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” a constellation of tiny lines of color combining into a powerful image. Except the canvas of this research project will be a zebrafish, and the paint will be individual cells of a developing embryo.