Advance furthers stem cells for use in drug discovery, cell therapy

July 14, 2017

CVRC trainer, William Murphy, and former trainee, Eric Nguyen, developed a new material for growing and raising stem cells that could allow researchers to move away from using Matrigel.

This week, a UW–Madison team reports in Nature Biomedical Engineering that they have jumped a major hurdle on the path toward wider use of stem cells.  Using an automated screening test that they devised, William Murphy, a professor of biomedical engineering, and colleagues Eric Nguyen and William Daly have invented an all-chemical replacement for  the confusing, even dangerous materials, now used to grow these delicate cells.

“We set out to create a simple, completely synthetic material that would support stem cells without the issues of unintended effects and lack of reproducibility,” Murphy says.

Read full article: http://news.wisc.edu/advance-furthers-stem-cells-for-use-in-drug-discovery-cell-therapy/