In a lab near UW Hospital, Megan Jandy grows stem cells from people with Down syndrome — 10 batches of cells, most in three-dimensional clusters, each batch featuring one group with the extra chromosome that causes the disorder and one group without it.
Megan Jandy, a graduate student in Anita Bhattacharyya’s lab at UW-Madison's Waisman Center, grows clusters of stem cells from tissue donated by people with Down syndrome. The lab leads a project to create a prenatal brain atlas of Down syndrome, which could boost the search for treatments to reduce the condition's intellectual disability.
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Dave Witte pushes a swing for his daughter, Olivia, who has Down syndrome, in the family's yard in Monona. Witte said he is conflicted about the possibility of treatments to reduce the disorder's learning disability. "I don't want to change who she is as a person," he said.
Megan Jandy and others in Anita Bhattacharyya’s lab at UW-Madison grow stem cells from people with Down syndrome into three-dimensional clusters, called organoids, that model early brain development.
Anita Bhattacharyya, an associate professor of cell and regenerative biology at UW-Madison, heads up a project to map the prenatal brain in Down syndrome, funded by an $11 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Cristina Delgadillo, a UW Health pediatrician, said her daughter, Olivia, who has Down syndrome, is her "shadow."
Olivia Witte, left, 11, and sisters, Gabriela, 13, center, and Daniela, 14, play with Albert, one of the family’s two miniature Irish doodles.
Olivia Witte, a fifth-grader at Winnequah Elementary School in Monona, plays with her sister, Daniela, a ninth-grader at Monona Grove High School, at their home in Monona.
Dave Witte and Dr. Cristina Delgadillo live in Monona with their daughters Gabriela, Daniela and Olivia.
David Egan speaks at a Waisman Center event at Monona Terrace.
Stem cells used for Down syndrome research at UW-Madison are kept in incubators, regular freezers and cryogenic freezers, in liquid nitrogen, depending on how and when they are needed.
The Down syndrome prenatal brain atlas project at UW-Madison involves four faculty members: Daifeng Wang, Anita Bhattacharyya, Su-Chun Zhang and André Sousa.
Kamryn Witkowiak, a senior at UW-Madison, works in Anita Bhattacharyya’s lab at UW-Madison’s Waisman Center, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.
Dave Witte and his daughters, Olivia, right, and Gabriela, play with their miniature Irish settlers Albert and Larry.
