Below is a summary of media coverage from various sources of recent studies by University of Wisconsin-Madison in which researchers successfully replicated a disease in a lab dish:
Wisconsin State Journal, December 22, 2008: "University of Wisconsin-Madison stem-cell team replicates disease in lab dish":
A year after University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist James Thomson announced a new type of human embryonic stem cells, campus researchers have realized a major promise of the new cells: replicating a disease in a lab dish. A team led by neuroscientist Clive Svendsen used the new stem cells to create a model of spinal muscular atrophy, the most common genetic cause of infant mortality. Researchers at Harvard University and elsewhere have used the cells to simulate other diseases, but Svendsen is the first to do so and show how a disease process works, said a prominent scientist in the field."
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 21, 2008: "Stem cells give scientists a window on diseases":
"Using a simple skin biopsy from a young boy with a deadly genetic illness, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have provided the first demonstration that reprogramming can offer researchers an unprecedented view of human disease. The skin cells came from a boy with spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA, an illness that is similar to Lou Gehrig's disease, but afflicts children. The disease kills motor neurons until muscles stop working. Children become immobile, dependent on respirators and feeding tubes, and eventually die. The boy, whose biopsy the scientists used, ultimately died of SMA at age 3. The UW scientists used the reprogramming technique pioneered last year by their UW colleague James Thomson and by Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University in Japan, and sent the boy's skin cells back to the embryonic state. They then grew the reprogrammed cells into motor neurons, the type damaged by the disease."
The Capital Times, December 21, 2008: "UW researchers watch disease unfold in lab dish":
"University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have re-created the key traits of a devastating neurological disease in the lab using stem cells derived from an afflicted patient, a breakthrough that will allow scientists the opportunity to better study the ailment and develop new treatments for it. The findings, to be reported this week in the journal Nature, came out of UW-Madison stem cell biologist Clive Svendsen's lab and relate to spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA. The team at UW-Madison and a group at the University of Missouri-Columbia created these disease-specific stem cells by genetically reprogramming skin cells from a patient with spinal muscular atrophy."
