Morgridge Institute For Researchinc

Programs: Regenerative biology: understanding and directing cellular fates to improve health- vascular tissue engineering: development of functional arteries useful in heart bypass operations and transplants for peripheral artery disease. - correcting or preventing blindness: production of outer retinal tissue from stem cells for use in cell-based therapies for retinal degenerative disease. - neural toxicity tests: using 3d 'tissue chip' models of the human brain as a screening tool for chemicals that may harm human development.

core computation: expending computing power to address new questions in biology- big data and alzheimer's: using information from medical imaging, patient records and clinical trials to pinpoint the earliest possible warning signs of dementia. - research computing: managing an infrastructure that enables hundreds of uw-madison scientists to run high-throughput computing projects that log more than 150 million hours annually. - better cyber-security: creating a national resource that offers free, state-of-the-art tools software developers to eliminate vulnerabilities in their code.

virology: unlocking the secrets of virus-host interactions to better protect human health- hiv prevention: understanding how host cellular factors regulate hiv replication and gene expression during infection, as a key step in combating hiv. - viruses and cancer: investigating human papillomavirus (hpv) as a cause of cervical and neck cancers, and using information from cervical cancer screening programs to study all stages of human cancer. - systems biology: analyzing data from interactions across thousands of genes to find clues to how viruses manage to escape detection and invade host cells.

medical engineering: advancing technologies to better diagnose, treat and prevent disease- transient lighting for surgery: development of a rapid-switch lighting system that provides full light in the operating room, while protecting light-sensitive fluorescence images of use to surgeons. - better ct images: developing a multi-source x-ray tube for computed tomography (ct) - one of the most widely used tools to image disease - to enable faster imaging, dose reduction and improved image quality. - improved breast cancer tracking: creating an imaging system to track breast cancer based on alignment of collagen fibers, which are biomarkers for breast cancer metastasis. General science- bioethics: addressing emerging ethical issues and building a culture of responsible science. - hemostasis: initiation and regulation of protease cascades, which govern a variety of essential physiological processes from blood clotting to mechanisms of cell death. - outreach: engage the community in science education. Metabolism: elucidating the chemistry of life and its disruption in human disease- mitochondria and disease: unlocking function of the mitochondria, or "cellular powerhouse," to understand its role in more than 150 diseases, including parkinson's, diabetes and cancer. - orphan proteins: establishing a research platform to study the more than 100 proteins - nearly one-quarter of the mammalian mitochondrial proteome - that have a yet-undiscovered biochemical function. - coenzyme q: integrating various biochemical, genetic and structural biology approaches to further elucidate the steps of coenzyme q, whose deficiency is associated with multiple human diseases.