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.