WID Researchers Looking to the Future with UW2020 Awards
Investigators from WID are among the recipients of the latest round of UW2020 awards.
Tag: precision medicine
Precision medicine is an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person. This approach will allow doctors and researchers to predict more accurately which treatment and prevention strategies for a particular disease will work in which groups of people. It is in contrast to a “one-size-fits-all” approach, in which disease treatment and prevention strategies are developed for the average person, with less consideration of the differences between individuals.
Researchers at WID with expertise in complex biological systems, epigenetics, data science, health care, gene editing, and tissue engineering will contribute to “healthy people” initiatives through precison medicine.
Precision medicine is an important component of WID’s Multi-Omics Hub.
Ryan Aturaliya
Treating ePTFE grafts to mimic the characteristics of human blood vessels.
Jo Handelsman
WID Director
Genetic and biochemical processes underlying interactions within plant and human microbiomes.
UW Carbone Scientists Present at Annual Cancer Research Conference
One of the UW Carbone Cancer Center members presenting is WID’s Peter Lewis. His work focuses on how genes are turned on and off during embryonic development, and how misregulation in those genes can lead to some childhood cancers.
Small But Mighty: Nanoparticles Can Deliver More Types of Drugs, More Safely
WID researcher Shaoqin Sarah Gong is working to more safely deliver a variety of drugs to treat cancer, heart disease and even blindness.
New Hope for Stopping an Understudied Heart Disease in its Tracks
Biomedical engineering professor and Discovery Fellow Kristyn Masters and colleagues identified the early stages of a process that may eventually cause aortic stenosis, a severe narrowing of the aortic valve that reduces blood flow to the body and weakens the heart.
Randolph Ashton Continues Research into Causes of Lou Gehrig’s Disease
In August 2017, Randolph Ashton received almost $800,000 from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of NIH, to continue a five-year research study of Lou Gehrig’s disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS), after successfully completing its first phase.
UW-Madison to be Partner in Center for Cell Manufacturing Technologies
The National Science Foundation has awarded nearly $20 million to a consortium of universities to support a new engineering research center that will develop transformative tools and technologies for the consistent, scalable, and low-cost production of high-quality living therapeutic cells. Several WID investigators are collaborators on the project.
Louise Saraspe
In vitro modeling of CAR T cell cytotoxicity, activation, and exhaustion
Eric Armstrong
Comparative metabolomics; Epigenetics of therapy-resistant prostate cancer
Evan Cory
Disease modeling using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing and directed differentiation of human stem cells
Alexis Lawton
Understanding the mechanisms and biological functions of reversible protein acetylation.
Handelsman Lab
Understanding diversity in microbial communities and their role in infectious disease; in particular, the genetic basis for stability of microbial communities, the role of a gut community as a source of opportunistic pathogens, and the soil microbial community as a source of new antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes.
Yin Research Group
Investigating how living organisms cooperate or compete in diverse and changing environments. Methods and perspectives are drawn from many fields, including ecology, evolution, molecular biology, physics, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, and computer science. The lab uses data-driven mechanistic and statistical models to predict when microbes or other organisms will persist or perish, with a broad goal of promoting human health through effective management of microbe-host interactions.
Saha Human Stem Cell Engineering Lab
By bringing together stem cell biology, genome engineering, and biomaterials expertise, the Saha lab generates new tools for use with human-induced pluripotent stem cells to ask unique questions about human biology and disease.
Gong Lab
Prof. Gong’s research group focuses on the design, synthesis/fabrication, and characterization of novel materials and devices. Many of their ongoing projects are multidisciplinary, bridging engineering with materials science, chemistry, and life sciences. Some of their efforts include multifunctional drug/agent nanocarriers for the combined delivery of therapeutic and diagnostic agents which can be used to treat and diagnose various types of diseases. Her group also studies multifunctional polymer nanocomposites for various applications including flexible electronics, supercapacitors, and nanogenerators.
Ashton Group: Stem Cell Bioprocessing and Regenerative Biomaterials Lab
The Ashton Group is working to understand, model, and recapitulate in vitro the instructive signals utilized by human embryos to pattern tissue-specific differentiation of pluripotent stem cells, and apply this knowledge towards the rational design of tissue engineered scaffolds and other regenerative therapeutic strategies.