A multidisciplinary team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Morgridge Institute for Research is creating a faster, more affordable way to screen for neural toxins, helping flag chemicals that may harm human development.
As brain surgeons test new procedures and drugs to treat conditions ranging from psychiatric disorders to brain cancer, accuracy is becoming an ever-greater issue.
By swapping replacement parts into the backbone of a synthetic hormone, UW-Madison graduate student Ross Cheloha and his mentor Sam Gellman, along with collaborators at Harvard Medical School, have built a version of a parathyroid hormone that resists degradation in laboratory mice. As a result, the altered hormone can stay around longer – and at much higher concentration, says Gellman, professor of chemistry at the UW.
When chemist Tehshik Yoon looks out his office window, he sees a source of energy to drive chemical reactions. Plants “learned” to synthesize chemicals with sunlight eons ago; Yoon came to the field a bit more recently. But this week, in the journal Science, he and three collaborators detail a way to use sunlight and two catalysts to create molecules that are difficult to make with conventional techniques — a finding that may eventually have implications for drug making and materials science.
In a pair of landmark studies that exploit the genetic sequencing of the “missing link” cold virus, rhinovirus C, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have constructed a three-dimensional model of the pathogen that shows why there is no cure yet for the common cold.
The 2013 Fall University Roundtable series kicks off Oct. 9 with a presentation by Chancellor Rebecca Blank about the future of UW-Madison.