A contract to manufacture DNA-based flu vaccine has been awarded to the Waisman Clinical BioManufacturing Facility at UW-Madison’s Waisman Center.
The vaccine will be tested first on animals, with human testing expected to begin early next year during the flu season, said Allen D. Allen, chief executive of CytoDyn of Santa Fe, N.M., which developed the vaccine.
A local biotech company is eyeing major growth after acquiring platform technology from global pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline Inc.
….The UW-Madison spinoff, which was formed six years ago, now expects to become profitable within two years, although one giant deal could make it instantly profitable, according to GenTel CEO Alex Vodenlich.
The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine will conduct a clinical study looking at whether a patientâ??s own stem cells can be used to treat severe coronary artery disease, said a statement released Monday. The test is already going on at UW Hospital and Clinics, one of only 15-20 sites in the country to be participating in the study.
The University of Wisconsin welcomed a world famous speaker Monday night who offered an emotional message and chilling statistics on the HIV and AIDS pandemic in Africa.
For one Middleton resident who’s tried everything to ease his symptoms from a severe form of heart disease, a new stem-cell treatment trial could be just what the doctor ordered.
For the past 20 years, Steve Myrah has suffered from chronic myocardial ischemia, a form of coronary artery disease that narrows arteries and limits blood flow to the heart. He struggles with pressure and pain in his chest daily, and he can’t walk more than a block without having to stop
MIDDLETON, Wis. — A Middleton man has been selected to be part of a national clinical trial that could revolutionize cardiac care.The trial will use adult stem cells provided by the patients themselves, reported WISC-TV.
If successful, the use of stem cells could help hundreds of thousands of Americans who live each day with a serious heart condition, the narrowing of coronary arteries.The UW is among the first medical centers in the country taking part in the trial.Steve Myrah, 68, of Middleton, suffers from chronic serious heart pain.
68-year-old Steven Myrah could make the medical books if the procedure he underwent is successful. He was the first patient to undergo a new experimental surgery testing whether stem cells injected into weak areas of the heart can help blood vessels get stronger. Doctors mapped out his heart, found the weakened areas, and injected them with stem cells, or a placebo in some cases, to test whether they rejuvenate the tissue.
Trans fats have always been present in small amounts in animal products such as dairy and meats. However, large amounts of trans fats are now present in processed foods as a result of the addition of hydrogen to plant oils in a process called hydrogenation.
The MIT Club of Wisconsin, a state association for alumni of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is honoring a UW-Madison influenza researcher and a bioscience spinoff company.
The researcher, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a UW virologist and professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine, has gained worldwide recognition for his research on how influenza viruses replicate and the genetic contributors to virulence.
Quintessence Biopharmaceuticals of Madison, a company that grew out of the research of UW chemistry and biochemistry professors Laura Kiessling and Ron Raines, is being honored in the small company category.
A Middleton man whose angina is so severe that he gets chest pains watching the Badgers play basketball has become the first person in the state to join a stem cell clinical trial that uses patients’ own cells to treat their heart disease.
“A good basketball game is a three-nitro game for me,” Steve Myrah, 68, of Middleton, said of the number of nitroglycerin tablets he typically takes to ease the pain during a game.
In the trials, doctors at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics and other locations will harvest adult stem cells from a patient’s bone marrow and inject them into blood-deprived areas of the heart.
Cellectar, a Madison biotech company developing a shot-in-the-arm treatment for cancer, is about to take a big leap forward, thanks to a healthy wad of cash, a one-of-a-kind machine and a new, well-credentialed chief executive with big hopes and plans. Cellectar is a UW-Madison spinoff company.
Here’s one of Steve Myrah’s problems: He is such a huge fan of the University of Wisconsin basketball team that games, literally, are painful to watch, causing his angina to flare up and forcing him to pop nitroglycerin tablets to ease his chest pain.
Last week, he became the first heart patient in Wisconsin to enter a novel stem cell clinical trial using patients’ own cells to treat their heart disease.
Doctors at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics harvested adult stem cells from Myrah’s bone marrow so they could be injected into blood-deprived areas of his heart. The hope is that the cells will stimulate the formation of new blood vessels or the expansion of existing ones, restoring blood flow.
In a lab on the University of Wisconsin campus people are busy working on experiments. Looking around you would think it is a normal science lab for chemistry or physics class. But these people arenâ??t there because a grade depends on it. They are there because lives depend on the outcome of their research.
Leading the nation in underage drinking is one of Wisconsin’s more dubious distinctions.
According to a report released last week by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the rate of underage drinking (ages 12 to 20) was highest in Wisconsin at 39.5 percent and lowest in Utah, at 21.3 percent.
To help address the problem, a consortium of local groups are sponsoring a town hall meeting on middle school drinking tonight at the Exhibition Hall at the Alliant Energy Center. The program, “Start Talking Before They Start Drinking,” is aimed at parents and other adults who are concerned about youngsters and alcohol abuse.
Madison is the No. 1 city to walk in for exercise, according to new rankings released by Prevention Magazine.
Marion Nestle, an expert in food politics, travels the country talking about the scientific, social and economic factors that influence federal dietary guidance policies. Invariably after her speeches, people come up and ask her what to eat.
“There is public confusion about nutrition and health. The public is enormously confused about what to eat,” Nestle told a group of about 500 Monday night in the Union Theater as part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Distinguished Lecture Series.
UW-Madison sophomore Kelly Anger figures it’s best to be on the safe side. In the wake of Saturday’s sexual assault near campus, she and her roommates will probably be carrying pepper spray from now on.
“When it happens on your own street, you’re a little more scared,” said Anger, who lives on the 1000 block of Spring Street, where a sexual assault took place just before 2 a.m. Saturday. The area is a block west of Smith Hall, the newest UW-Madison dormitory.
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush has enlisted former UW chancellor and Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala and former Sen. Bob Dole to lead an investigation of problems at the nation’s military and veterans’ hospitals.
Bush was to announce his appointments Tuesday in a speech to the American Legion.
Quoted: Dr. J. Louis Hinshaw, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine.
Programs like Colleges Against Cancer allow students to increase awareness and one UW student is doing just that.
Kari Liotta is the survivorship chair for Colleges Against Cancer.
She was diagnosed with cancer in high school–now a cancer survivor, she’s says she’s thankful to live and tell her story to help others.Programs like Colleges Against Cancer allow students to increase awareness and one UW student is doing just that.
Kari Liotta is the survivorship chair for Colleges Against Cancer.
She was diagnosed with cancer in high school–now a cancer survivor, she’s says she’s thankful to live and tell her story to help others.
Many UW-Madison students are scrambling to find affordable birth control in reaction to a sharp rise in prescription contraceptive costs because of a federal law that went into effect in January.
Drug companies previously provided low-cost pricing to University Health Services and many other college health services nationwide, but the Federal Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 required the cancellation of those contracts as of Jan. 1, 2007. But the law has some costly consequences.
When it comes to health, residents of Green and Lafayette counties are doing better than much of the rest of the state.
Ramona DeNure, Argyle, works out at the Green County Family YMCA as part of the SilverSneakers program. Lafayette County residents came in at third in the state in healthy behaviors, which includes participating in physical activity, while Green County ranked 26th, according to a recent survey by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
That’s according to the results of the annual Wisconsin County Health Rankings 2006, recently published by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
A new cancer support center named for a former Saturday Night Live comedian is scheduled to open in Madison early next year.
The state Supreme Court said Wednesday it will take up a politically charged and complicated gay rights case.
The court said it will decide whether the city of Green Bay and other Wisconsin municipalities, including the town of Cottage Grove, can intervene in a lawsuit in which gay and lesbian state employees are seeking health insurance benefits for their partners.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison awarded seed money to eight major research projects Wednesday as part of a program to build interest in its new research institutes.
The proposals will receive a total of $3 million to tackle problems including detecting disease, producing human embryonic stem cells and improving reading among black children.
The research projects, selected from a pool that originally included 220 ideas, are designed to illustrate the interdisciplinary approach embodied by the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
Lenor Zeeh, who had a long career with Rennebohm Pharmacy in Madison, has made a $1 million gift to the Lenor Zeeh Pharmaceutical Experiment Station at UW-Madison’s School of Pharmacy.
Madison, Wis. – A lot of chief information officers try to measure their value in financial terms, and Mike Sauk is no different.
Sauk, vice president and CIO of University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, isn’t talking about balance sheet return on investment; he has in mind a more practical form of ROI.
Roy Prange was diagnosed with osteoarthritis in 1996 – as the cartilage cushion between the bones in his hip joints began to break down.
….The Madison attorney, now 61, eventually had both hips replaced the first in 2001 and the second in 2002, at the University of Wisconsin Hospital.
These days, he has a lot of company. In the few years since Prange got his hips replaced, the surgeries to repair these joints have become increasingly popular in the Madison area.
Jon Foley was a sixth-grader in Bangor, Maine when the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown in 1979.
Though he was just 11, Foley says he remembers how it was front-page news for days and how relieved everyone was when disaster was finally averted.
….Foley, director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, says he tends to believe nuclear experts when they say today’s nuclear plants are far safer than those built 30 years ago.
Recent statistics from the Wisconsin Department of Health showed a statewide increase in the number of diagnosed cases of AIDS/HIV.
Gov. Jim Doyle says he can’t understand why hospital officials aren’t applauding his plan to tax hospitals.
The two-year state budget proposal envisions a 1 percent tax on gross revenues at the state’s 132 hospitals, which Doyle said would generate $418 million that would bring in $575 million in federal matching funds. Most of the money would be used to increase reimbursements to hospitals for care provided to low-income people under the Medicaid program. The rest would apparently cover other Medicaid and health costs.
“Happy Valentine’s day, would you like a condom from sex out loud?”
Talking about sex out loud is no problem for UW student Ann Slabosky.
After all, she is the head of a student group that focuses on sex.
But for some women, sex is the last they thing that want to think about.
“They’re very stressed out, they have a high class load,” said Slabosky, “they’re not having enough time to work out, things like that and that will cause them to not really want to have sex as much as their boyfriends want them to have sex.”
MADISON, Wis. — The American Family Children’s Hospital is still under construction, but the AAA Child Passenger Safety Inspection Station is now officially open.
The idea of the inspection station is to help reduce injuries and deaths in infants and children in crashes by properly installing and using child safety seats.
“This inspection station will allow them a high quality, hands-on education and teaching experience allowing them to know what kind of car seats to use for their child, how to install it properly in the car and how to get their children properly secured,” said Kylene Anttila, child passenger safety technician at University of Wisconsin-Madison Children’s Hospital.
Some people just love winter. They sled on lunch trays, play a little ice hockey and build snowmen bearing a resemblance to Bucky Badger. They love snowball fights. They even enjoy bundling up to walk to class when it is minus 10 degrees. Yet somehow, they make you want to shove them into a snow bank.
Gov. Jim Doyle’s request for lawmakers to include health insurance coverage for the domestic partners of state employees, including the UW system, should be made a priority as part of Wisconsin’s 2007-2009 budget.
Wisconsin’s motto is “Forward.” And, despite the wrongheaded efforts of conservative legislators to turn their petty bigotry into public policy, Gov. Jim Doyle has chosen to keep Wisconsin in step with forward-thinking states on the question of how to treat same-sex couples.
As part of his budget proposal, Doyle is calling on members of the Assembly and Senate to extend domestic partner health insurance to all state employees.
Quoted: Dr. Steve Barczi, a geriatric specialist at the University of Wisconsin Hospital.
A University of Wisconsin alumnus donated $1 million Monday to the UW Pharmaceutical Experimental Station â?? the same laboratory that bears his name.
Experts say people who feel bombarded by loud noise often feel helpless to do anything about it. Why? Because police and local governments tend to treat noise as an annoyance rather than as a potential health hazard. Ted Rueter says it’s time to fight back.
A political science professor at Beloit College, the 50-year-old Rueter has been waging a one-man crusade against excessive noise since 2001, when he taught at UCLA.
TomoTherapy – considered one of Madison’s shining stars in the new tech economy – could also shine on Wall Street, experts said Monday, after the company filed papers seeking to raise up to $201 million in a public stock offering.
MADISON, Wis. – TomoTherapy Inc., which makes radiation equipment used in treating cancer, filed papers Monday seeking to raise as much as $201 million in an initial public offering of its stock.
Big discoveries are rare in research labs. Most of the time, scientists have to try over and over again to achieve the effect they want. Drugs are especially tricky, since even effective drugs can have toxic side effects. Fiddling with the molecular structure can improve a drugâ??or make it worse. Up until now, those attempts to tweak existing drugs focused on the carbon chemistry of medicine. Like humans, medicines are made up mostly of carbon.
The deadline is looming for UW Madison students to sign up for the University’s health insurance.
However, the extra cash may not be worth the extra coverage.
The majority of UW students are not using the University’s Student Health Insurance Plan, called SHIP. In fact, only 15% of Madison students are enrolled.
LAKE DELTON – Major roadblocks remain before human embryonic stem cells could be transplanted into humans to cure diseases or replace injured body parts, a research pioneer said Thursday night.
University of Wisconsin scientist James Thomson said obstacles include learning how to grow the cells into all types of organs and tissue and then making sure cancer and other defects are not introduced during the transplantation.
Wisconsin hospitals are preparing to fight a new tax that Gov. Jim Doyle is expected to unveil on Tuesday when he releases his new two-year budget.
The tax would be used to pay for health care costs and other expenses, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Wisconsin State Journal reported in Friday’s editions. Doyle spokesman Matt Canter said Friday he could not confirm that the tax would be proposed in the governor’s budget, but that all sources of federal money were being looked at.
Slightly fewer babies are born with autism in Wisconsin than in the rest of the nation, but the reason for the difference remains unclear.
A study released Thursday by U.S. health officials found evidence of autism in 5.2 per 1,000 Wisconsin children born in 1994, compared to an average of 6.6 cases per 1,000 children born in 13 other states tracked for the study.
Scientists also found that autism rates in Dane County were more than twice those in Milwaukee County, according to Maureen Durkin, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In his Tuesday budget message, Gov. Jim Doyle is expected to propose a tax on hospitals to leverage hundreds of millions of dollars in additional federal Medicaid cash to help pay for health care reforms.
Quoted: Dr. Niloo Edwards, chairman of cardiac surgery at UW Hospital.
Employers can substantially help lower-paid workers by helping them do their taxes, according to new research that has prompted a pilot program in Madison.
University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics is trying out the idea, which came from John Hoffmire, director of the Center on Business and Poverty at the University Innovation Center.
While social conservatives were expected to fight the mandatory vaccination of young girls against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer, the loudest opposition in Wisconsin is coming from a more unlikely source: pediatricians.
Quoted: Dr. James Conway, an associate professor in the University of Wisconsin Medical School’s Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease and chair of the infectious diseases committee of the Wisconsin Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatricians.
Have you ever considered donating your body to science? I’m not talking about specific organs for transplant. Many of us have signed our intent to do this on the back of our driver’s license and this is an extremely valuable gift.
The donation I am referring to has to do with willing your body to a medical institution where it will be used for students in various medical fields to learn anatomy.
Have you ever considered donating your body to science? I’m not talking about specific organs for transplant. Many of us have signed our intent to do this on the back of our driver’s license and this is an extremely valuable gift.
The excitement of Super Bowl XLI is now behind us. In case you missed it, yesterday, the battle for all of the NFLââ?¬â?¢s glory was played out by two great states of the Midwest. As millions gathered together on couches across the country to cheer on their favorite team and to watch the multi-million dollar advertisements, they also likely indulged in the traditional Super Bowl treatsââ?¬â?a smorgasbord of buffalo wings, pizza, chips and beer. While far from our thoughts, and not nearly as entertaining, an internal battle was also raging yesterdayââ?¬â?Americaââ?¬â?¢s fight against high cholesterol.
Quoted: Dr. Diane Heatley, an associate professor of otolaryngology at UW-Madison who performed the three-hour operations on the boys.
Quoted: Dr. Diane Heatley, who works in pediatric Otolaryngology at University of Wisconsin-Madison Health.
An animal disease expert with 12 years of experience in dealing with the implications of livestock diseases nationally and internationally has been chosen to head the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.
Thomas McKenna is director of the Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Plum Island, N.Y., where he has worked since 1995.
As a physician and researcher who specializes in alcohol problems, I’d like to inject some science and logic into the discussion on the downtown alcohol density plan.
It’s a fact that most downtown crime, violence and disturbances involve alcohol. It’s a fact that numerous scientific studies show that neighborhoods with high alcohol outlet density have higher rates of crime, violence and disturbances than those with low density.
….Let’s opt for some medicine now while our disease is treatable. Let’s not wait till downtown hits bottom, when urban fright, flight and blight become a vicious circle.
Richard L. Brown, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Declaring that the political debate is over, Gov. Jim Doyle is calling on Congress to pass legislation expanding government-financed embryonic stem cell research, despite President Bush’s promise to veto it.
“I think the president’s position is becoming more and more untenable,” Doyle said Wednesday after meeting with Senate Democrats on the issue. “The political debate on this is over.”
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Aurora Health Care and the City of Milwaukee are discussing Aurora Sinai Medical Center in downtown Milwaukee as the site for a school of public health.
Gov. Jim Doyle is putting $30 million in his budget to help get all health care providers in the state to switch from paper to electronic medical record keeping systems.
The initiative would “reduce the cost and improve the quality of health care in Wisconsin,” Doyle said at a news conference this morning at Dean Health System’s East Clinic.
Doyle said health information now is often incomplete and filled with errors, which compromises patient health. He cited statistics from the U.S. Institute of Medicine that found that up to 98,000 people in the United States die annually from medical errors.
