The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation announced that a jury has awarded it $1 million in its case against Xenon Pharmaceuticals, a Canadian biotech company that had licensed technology discovered at UW-Madison via WARF.
Madison, Wis. – A California taxpayer and consumer rights group believes the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent eBay ruling weakens the position of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation regarding its stem cell patent, but a spokesman for the Wisconsin foundation said its recent $1 million jury reward in the Xenon Pharmaceuticals case demonstrates its ability to defend patents.
Ase em Ansari, an assistant professor of biochemistry and genetics at UW-Madison, is one of two recipients of the 2006 Shaw Scientist Award.
Doctors say they were able to cure urinary incontinence in the vast majority of patients who were treated with injections of their own stem cells.
A “new” technology that has actually been around for 60 years is being used for applications from airline baggage checks to food products to consumer goods and even human beings.
Wisconsinites need to get as engaged as Californians about the importance of embryonic stem cell research to secure the state’s leadership role in this field, a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist said Thursday.
Q: What enables ants to find the nearest picnic?
A: From one ant to dozens, it doesn’t seem to take the critters long to overrun your ham sandwich and ruin your picture-perfect picnic.
It starts with an individual ant, which has left the colony on a scouting mission, says Bob Jeanne, a UW-Madison professor of entomology.
It�s been nearly five years since President Bush�s executive order limiting federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, and some politicians are calling louder than ever for a bill that would render the order obsolete.
Mentor Corp. has begun clinical testing of another botulinum product stemming from a licensing agreement with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
The Phase 1 safety and dose escalation study involves a botulinum toxin type A product focused on treating the pain associated with adult onset spasmodic torticollis/cervical dystonia.
Don’t take the “bird-flu capital” title the wrong way and run screaming for the nearest border.
Dottie Moseley already has lost her mother, sister and cousin to breast cancer. She often pondered how to keep it from striking her family again.
So when Moseley, 58, learned that the University of Wisconsin-Madison was a part of a large clinical trial on breast cancer prevention, she didn’t think twice about enrolling.
Madison, Wis. – In an impressive display of grant-winning ability, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has received twin grants from the National Science Foundation to address some of the world’s most complex issues, including climate change.
A UW-Madison dean said Thursday the school is investigating former genetics professor Elizabeth Goodwin, who resigned in February, on allegations of research misconduct involving federal grant money.
Bill Mellon, associate dean for research policy, said he hoped the investigation would be finished before fall. Results would then have to be shared with the federal Office of Research Integrity, which would decide whether to pursue any legal charges, he said.
The sudden departure of a University of Wisconsin-Madison geneticist has meant years of lost work for her graduate students, one of those students said today.
Q: Why don’t cars rust like they used to?
A: Rust used to be one of the great banes of car ownership. And because road salt accelerates rusting, the problem was especially severe in places like Wisconsin, where the roads are salted in winter. Many cars rusted to pieces long before they failed mechanically.
Treating young children for asthma helps them while they receive the medicine but doesn’t cure the problem, researchers have found.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison continues to investigate activities by an associate professor of genetics who resigned in February.
Given the decades-long warnings about a looming world energy crisis – punctuated by the recent spike in crude oil prices – you’d assume the U.S. has been ramping up its research and development spending on energy.
Think again. Since 1980, energy research has fallen from 10 percent to 2 percent of total R&D spending.
Milwaukee, Wis. – The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has announced the funding of 45 top-ranked research proposals generated in an internal seed-funding competition.
….Rather than focusing on tax breaks or other incentives, regions looking to grow their economy need to be investing in education, basic services and those “quality of life” things that make a place attractive.
A first step for any community, however, is to realistically assess its strengths and weaknesses, says Barry Bluestone, director of the Center for Urban and Regional Planning at Northeastern University.
….Bluestone also cautioned against putting too much stock in the latest fad, specifically the biotechnology and nanotechnology bandwagon.
Bluestone also says states should create clusters of regional economic activity where people can meet, share ideas and foster a positive atmosphere. The University Research Park in Madison would seem to qualify on that account.
If the University of Wisconsin-Madison stands out as the state’s flagship research school, routinely able to lure venture capital and spin off start-up companies, UW-Milwaukee has long been the underfunded underdog.
It probably wasn’t until the threat of losing e-mail service through the popular, handheld BlackBerry devices sent a shudder through the nation that most people were even aware of a growing trend: small companies, often with only a handful of employees, taking on the tech giants in big-bucks patent lawsuits.
MADISON – Don’t suggest to UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Carlos Santiago that research projects on his campus will get ahead by pilfering from programs at UW-Madison. He’ll probably laugh at you.
The dedication of the Chemistry Research Tower on the UW-Madison campus today and Saturday is a fitting tribute to former chancellor Irving Shain.
Shain joined the chemistry department at UW-Madison as an instructor in 1952. A love for teaching combined with an aptitude for administration led Shain to become chemistry department chairman, then vice-chancellor for academic affairs and finally chancellor from 1977-1986.
Q: Why do stars twinkle?
A. From the time we toddle, we are taught that stars twinkle. That phenomenon has nothing to do with stars and everything to do with one’s vantage point.
Madison, Wis. – University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have until June 1 to submit initial proposals as part of a grant program designed to stimulate collaborative research projects.
The first embryonic stem cells were isolated in mice in 1981. But it wasn’t until 1998 that researchers managed to derive stem cells from human embryos. That kicked into full gear an ethical debate that continues to this day. Here’s a look at key moments in the controversy so far.
Researchers from across the state have received their first formal invitation to submit ideas that will formulate collaborative biological and medical research at Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
UW-Madison unveiled details of a competitive seed grant program Monday that will initially provide $3 million in funding for research at the $375 million facility expected to open in 2009.
“It is critical that these projects begin soon so that research is well under way when we are ready to move into this world-class facility,” said UW-Madison graduate school Dean Martin Cadwallader in a statement.
A month ago, Chancellor John Wiley announced a total of $100 million in donations toward the construction of an on-campus biomedical research complex. And now the University of Wisconsin is asking its scientists and researchers what they want to do with it.
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D.
Published: May 2, 2006
Recent disclosures of fraudulent or flawed studies in medical and scientific journals have called into question as never before the merits of their peer-review system.
Organizers of the planned $375 million Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery in Madison said Monday that they are looking for researchers from around the state to compete in a new seed grant program.
Leaner, meaner bacteria could provide safer and more efficient ways to make hard-to-manufacture biological products, including vaccines and DNA-based pharmaceuticals.
UW-Madison professor of psychology and psychiatry Richard Davidson has been named one of Time magazine�s most influential people of 2006.
According to a University statement, Davidson has devoted his career to understanding the human brain in regards to how it regulates emotion.
Jamie Peck recalls a moment in September when President Bush vowed to spend “whatever it takes” – as much as $200 billion – to reconstruct the ravaged Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.
But the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor notes that lately it appears Bush is backpedaling on that pledge. Peck says the president’s change of heart has the fingerprints of “neoliberal” think tanks.
Usually it�s the other way around. But 15 years ago, the Dalai Lama approached Richard Davidson, a University of Wisconsin scientist and professor, with a question.
MILWAUKEE – In what could be a boon to development of vaccines and targeted therapies, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in collaboration with a team of international researchers, has created a streamlined, hardy form of the bacteria E. coli by reducing its DNA to its bare essentials.
MANITOWOC ââ?¬â? Sitting in her wheelchair, Gail Winter listened closely Wednesday evening to Dr. James Thomson, world-renowned researcher in the field of embryonic and adult stem cells.
Compare the thinking and priorities of a university research professor and someone at an international financial firm, and they likely won’t be too similar.
This week at UW-Madison, however, representatives of academic, financial and business organizations from around the world connected in meetings and discussions about a computer program they all use. Users of the program from companies that included JP Morgan, Yahoo!, Micron Technologies and United Bank of Switzerland participated.
The woes associated with genetically modified organisms dominate “The Future of Food,” a 90-minute documentary to be shown at the UW next week.
It is a project of Deborah Koons Garcia, widow of the Grateful Dead’s lead singer, Jerry Garcia. She wants people to know the political, health, environmental and global consequences of gene splicing and other biotech triumphs.
Science students from West High School will be competing against students from all 50 states in May after winning the 2006 Wisconsin Science Olympiad state tournament last weekend at the UW Engineering Department.
La Follette High’s A team finished second and its B team was sixth, while Memorial High was seventh out of 46 teams.
What would cause a mild-mannered Clark Kent of a mold to rear up like a demented superhero? Wisconsin scientists have found the apparent answer in a heat-sensitive biological switch, a crucial key to understanding how harmless soil fungi can transform themselves into virulent yeast cells when inhaled into human lungs.
In what could be a boon to development of vaccines and targeted therapies, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in collaboration with a team of international researchers, has created a streamlined, hardy form of the E. coli bacterium by reducing its DNA to its bare essentials.
Even in a constant state of jetlag, Yoshihiro Kawaoka is a fiercely productive flu researcher. Wonder what he could accomplish with a little bit of sleep?
If Yoshihiro Kawaoka owned a country, its citizens would be well protected from a bird flu pandemic.Confronted with a pandemic, Kawaoka says he would close his country’s borders and release a vaccine based on the live, but weakened, bird flu virus. Some people might fall ill from the vaccine strain, but far greater numbers would benefit. “The immune response provided by live virus, that is going to be the one that really protects humans,” Kawaoka says.
Gov. Jim Doyle signed an executive order making a commitment to market Wisconsin as the leader in the stem cell industry Tuesday. Doyle signed the order after touring the Cell Biology lab at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Wis.
In keeping with his plans to expand biotechnology research in Wisconsin, Gov. Jim Doyle announced Tuesday the state�s new goal to capture at least 10 percent of the stem cell market by the year 2015.
Gov. Jim Doyle signed an executive order Tuesday directing the state Department of Commerce to spend at least $5 million over an indefinite period of time to encourage more stem cell companies in Wisconsin.
Although manufacturing and farming quickly come to mind whenever one thinks of Wisconsin exports, some of the state’s most valuable products are its advances in life sciences.
The state must do a much better job of harnessing that scientific capital for its own economic well-being and future prosperity. These issues were outlined in a series of articles this week by Journal Sentinel reporters Kathleen Gallagher and Susanne Rust.
WAUWATOSA, Wis. ââ?¬â? Gov. Jim Doyle directed the state Tuesday to spend $5 million to help recruit stem cell researchers to Wisconsin.
The state Department of Commerce will spend the money marketing the state as a leader in stem cell research under the executive order the governor signed at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Twelve women are among the 72 newly elected members of the National Academy of Sciences, the academy said on Tuesday. That’s down from the record 19 women elected last year. Several UW-Madison faculty members were among the honorees.
The Wisconsin Capitol Rotunda will be alive with displays of undergraduate student research today for this yearââ?¬â?¢s ââ?¬Å?Posters in the Rotunda.ââ?¬Â
Although the long-term future of human embryonic stem cell research in Wisconsin depends on a political consensus, the issue does not fit neatly within the lines of Republican or Democratic, conservative or liberal.
In an effort to reaffirm the state�s commitment to stem-cell research, Gov. Jim Doyle will be making a major announcement today at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.
The Legislature is prepared this spring to make a down payment on a University of Minnesota request for $366 million to build five bioscience research laboratories in the next 10 years.
The state of California has been working its way through a list of thorny issues surrounding its groundbreaking Proposition 71 — $3 billion in funding for embryonic stem cell research that voters approved in 2004
A California state judge has ruled that legal challenges against the constitutionality of the state’s $3-billion stem-cell initiative have no merit.
Two University of Wisconsin-Madison professors will be featured in a new television documentary on global warming. It will premiere on HBO at 6 p.m. today (April 22), which is Earth Day.
Jonathan Foley and Jonathan Patz study climate change and its potential impacts at the UW’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. They are among the experts interviewed during the one-hour program, which is called “Too Hot to Handle.”
Two high-profile California companies – neither of which makes a profit – are the business face of embryonic stem cells in the United States.
Geron Inc. and Advanced Cell Technology Inc., which moved to California from Massachusetts in February, have publicly carried the torch for the promise of embryonic stem cells to produce therapies for spinal cord injuries and for diseases ranging from diabetes to Alzheimer’s.
Both are linked to Michael West, Advanced Cell Technology’s top executive and chief scientific officer. West founded Geron and oversaw its funding of some of the research that led to University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist James Thomson’s isolation of human embryonic stem cells in 1998.
For years, two of Wisconsin’s least-known exports have been among its most valuable: the intellectual and investment capital that help power the economic engines of states such as California and New York.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, among this country’s most successful university patenting and licensing organizations, has licensed most of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s life sciences technologies to out-of-state companies.
The State of Wisconsin Investment Board – the 25th biggest pension fund in the world, managing $76 billion – has used firms that focus on places such as Boston and the Silicon Valley to make virtually all of its venture capital investments in young businesses.
The work of Wisconsin stem cell scientists is re-emerging as some of the most promising in the world, eight years after the era of human stem cell research dawned in a lab here.
The focus on fundamental research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been eclipsed at times by the quest for dramatic breakthroughs and massive government funding elsewhere.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=418178
For years, two of Wisconsin’s least-known exports have been among its most valuable: the intellectual and investment capital that help power the economic engines of states such as California and New York.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, among this country’s most successful university patenting and licensing organizations, has licensed most of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s life sciences technologies to out-of-state companies.
The State of Wisconsin Investment Board – the 25th biggest pension fund in the world, managing $76 billion – has used firms that focus on places such as Boston and the Silicon Valley to make virtually all of its venture capital investments in young businesses.
Now human embryonic stem cells, first isolated in UW research labs, are providing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change that dynamic.
