Over 60 years of life-saving research and humane animal care
Congenital heart defects are the most common type of birth defect in the United States and can result in heart failure early in life. Stem cell grafts offer potential as a treatment for cardiac defects, but both laboratory bench experiments and whole-animal studies are necessary for progress in this area. By testing cardiac treatments in …
WNPRC scientist Marina Emborg and collaborators at Mayo Clinic showed that stem-cell-derived heart muscle cells can safely integrate into the hearts of rhesus macaques — the first congenital heart disease–like monkey model, developed at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center.
by Jennifer Bal and Mariel Mohns Scientists at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center (WNPRC) and the Morgridge Institute for Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have been at the forefront of stem cell research and regenerative biology since James Thomson isolated the first human embryonic stem cell in 1998. The Thomson Lab continued to pioneer new techniques to advance the field, including methods to …
UW–Madison researchers, working with the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center and collaborators in Taiwan, showed that combining two types of stem-cell-derived heart cells improves repair of heart muscle after a heart attack — a therapy validated in mice and, crucially, in nonhuman primates at WNPRC
WNPRC scientist Marina Emborg and her team developed a nonhuman-primate model that lets researchers visualize, in real time, the heart-nerve damage Parkinson’s disease causes — using PET imaging to track inflammation and nerve loss in the hearts of rhesus macaques. The advance could help detect and treat a serious but under-recognized effect of Parkinson’s on …