Over 60 years of life-saving research and humane animal care
Welcome to our annual update! Thank you, everyone, for another productive and rewarding year at the Primate Center! We have greatly enjoyed celebrating along with the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the whole world the 20th anniversary of the successful derivation and culture of human embryonic stem cells by James Thomson. Meanwhile, even as stem cells were …
By Jessica Knackert, WNPRC editorial intern A male Bornean orang-utan in Tanjung Puting National Park, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. (Photo by Graham L. Banes) Research at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center (WNPRC) has brought about major accomplishments in biomedical research, whether it be through advancements in various treatments and therapies, discovering the origins of numerous …
Twenty years ago, WNPRC scientist James Thomson derived the world’s first human embryonic stem cells — and later the first induced pluripotent stem cells — launching a new era of regenerative medicine. This piece marks the anniversary and traces how those breakthroughs, born from nonhuman-primate research at WNPRC, now drive dozens of clinical trials.
University of Pittsburgh and Wisconsin National Primate Research Center writers contributed to this story Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading infectious cause of death worldwide. The bacterial infection killed roughly 1.6 million people in 2017, according to the National Institutes of Health. In the past 200 years, TB claimed the lives of more than 1 billion …
WNPRC scientists Marissa Kraynak and Ricki Colman used marmoset monkeys to probe why menopause raises women’s risk of diabetes and weight gain — and found, surprisingly, that the decline in ovarian estradiol may play a much smaller role in metabolism than previously thought, pointing instead to estrogens produced elsewhere in the body, including the brain.
The National Primate Research Centers have been sending volunteers to Punta Santiago, Humacao, Puerto Rico to help with rebuilding efforts on Cayo Santiago. The team working there Aug. 18-26 included our own Ted Jones and Justin Schmidt from WNPRC Facilities Management and Shop Services. Watch the video recap from Project Monkey Island to learn more about …