University of Wisconsin – Madison

In late 1998, a UW-Madison group led by James Thomson was the first to isolate and culture human embryonic stem cells, master undifferentiated cells that arise at the earliest stages of development and are capable of becoming any of the 220 types of cells and tissues in the human body. Access to human ES cells promises significant opportunities to study early development and could one day provide a near limitless supply of cells for transplant therapy.

In the early 1960s, UW-Madison atmospheric scientist Verner Suomi began to lay the technological foundation for the modern weather satellite through invention and ingenuity in the use of technology in space. His invention of the spin-scan camera enabled development of the geostationary weather satellite and gave us the first pictures of weather from space. Subsequently, Suomi invented technology for the processing and manipulation of satellite imagery providing scientists and others with powerful new tools for weather analysis and forecasting. The technology invented by Suomi underpins the weather images that appear on the 6 O'clock news and that we routinely take for granted.

In the 1960s, UW-Madison biochemist Hector DeLuca made the fundamental discovery that vitamin D is biologically inactive and must be modified by the liver and kidney to assume its active, hormonal form. Since, DeLuca has designed and synthesized a family of metabolites and derivatives of the vitamin D hormone. Drugs based on these compounds have been used worldwide to treat diseases associated with vitamin D deficiency, including osteoporosis and psoriasis. Most recently, this line of work has led to two drugs used to treat secondary hyperthyroidism, a complication of chronic kidney failure that can lead to heart diseases, bone deterioration and other life-threatening illnesses.

Digital subtraction angiography (DSA), a technique developed by UW-Madison medical physicist Charles Mistretta, provides the capability to subtract the screening effects of bone and soft tissue in X-ray images and allows physicians to more clearly visualize the cardiovascular system. DSA has been the dominant X-ray technique for imaging blood vessels ever since its introduction to the marketplace in 1981, and doctors worldwide have used it to improve the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease. Equally significant was UW-Madison professor Paul Moran's development of a method and device that greatly enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allowing much improved diagnosis of various disease states and trauma-induced injury.

In 1986, UW-Madison researchers Folkert Belzer and James Southard developed a synthetic solution, dubbed the UW Solution, for cold storage of organs to be transplanted from one person to another. Before the UW Solution, organs were kept alive with a blood-based solution that consisted of natural products. But because these solutions were natural, they could only store livers for six hours and kidneys for up to three days. A frequent result was organ damage, which could lead to chronic rejection or a recipient's need for dialysis. The UW Solution increased storage times for organs such the liver and pancreas from six to 36 hours, and up to 84 hours for the kidney. Longer storage times led to more organs being transported between transplant centers, more rigorous tissue matches and, ultimately, more life-saving transplant surgeries.

In the 1950s and 1960s, UW-Madison researcher Dale E. Wurster developed an air-suspension method and device for coating pharmaceutical tablets. His work resulted in a widely used method for applying various coatings to pharmaceutical tablets to mask tastes and control the release of drugs in the human body. Wurster's technique is still widely used today to prepare granular preparations of pharmaceuticals for compression into tablets.

UW-Madison researchers Mark Cook and Michael Pariza identified conjugated linoleic, or CLA, in the late 1980s as a potential anti-cancer agent. Because CLA is safe for people to eat, being naturally produced in cow's milk and red meat, it was designated as a potential nutraceutical. CLA is now widely used as dietary supplement, food ingredient and animal feed ingredient. Since CLA's discovery as a possible anti-cancer agent, on-going research has revealed a number of additional benefits, including CLA's ability to control body fat and enhance immune function. Other uses are now being studied worldwide in laboratories and clinical trials, and CLA has become one of the bigger nutraceuticals on the market.

Building on work he began as a graduate student at Yale, Joshua Lederberg as a young UW-Madison professor in the late 1940s and early 1950s helped reveal the sexual reproductive capabilities of bacteria, and why bacteria such as tuberculosis become resistant to antibiotics.

For 400 years, mapmakers struggled to portray a spherical world on a flat map. In 1963, UW-Madison professor Arthur Robinson set out to minimize the distortions inherent in world maps. Employing then-new computer techniques, Robinson produced a projection map that more accurately reflects the actual size of continents. In 1988, the National l Geographic Society adopted Robinson's map projection, distributing