Surgeons use long, thin guidewires to thread catheters into the body’s vascular system to address problem areas. Photo courtesy NECTO student team

Four recent UW–Madison biomedical engineering graduates have invented a simple device that could shave minutes off stroke and aneurysm surgery — minutes that could be crucial in preserving neurological function.

Surgeons use long, thin guidewires to thread catheters into the body’s vascular system to address problem areas, such as a blood clot that’s causing a stroke. They currently rely on technicians to help them load a torque device at the end of the wire to help maneuver it.

The new device is a small plastic cylinder that allows surgeons to simply clip it on at any point along the guidewire without needing to wait on a technician and without needing to slide it off to change catheters or place another therapeutic device, such as a stent.

“The surgeon can just clip it on and get the catheter up to where you want it and then clip it off, deliver the catheter, deliver the therapy, and clip it on if you need it again,” says William Hayes ’23, who served as team lead on the project. “It’s just right there for you, rather than having to have another person six feet away fiddling with the end” of the guidewire.

The device has won two university awards, and the team hopes to license it for commercial use.

Damadian is shown here with an MRI machine. Getty Images/Neville Elder

No scalpels required. Thanks to Raymond Damadian ’56’s remarkable invention, it’s no longer necessary to open up the human body to detect cancer or pinpoint an injury.

Damadian built the world’s first magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine and performed the first full-body scan in 1977, after he discovered that tumors and normal tissue emit response signals that differ in wavelength.

“I thought if we could do on a human what we just did in that test tube, maybe we could build a scanner that would go over the body to hunt down cancer. It was kind of preposterous,” Damadian admitted, “but I had hope.”

That initial scan of a colleague’s thorax took nearly five hours to complete in Damadian’s machine, which he dubbed Indomitable in a nod to achieving what many thought couldn’t be done. Indomitable now resides at the Smithsonian Institution.

Damadian took a unique path to making his contribution to the medical field. As a boy, he attended public school but studied violin at the Juilliard School on weekends. When he was 15, the Ford Foundation gave him a full scholarship to the University of Wisconsin, and he left Juilliard behind. “It was okay,” he said. “I was no Itzhak Perlman.”

But later in life, controversy swirled around him. Damadian wasn’t selected to win a 2003 Nobel Prize when two fellow scientists received recognition for their role in MRI development — and he didn’t take the snub lightly. In keeping with what has been called his “exuberant” personality, Damadian took out full-page ads in the New York Times and other newspapers with the headline, “The Shameful Wrong That Must Be Righted.” The scientific community was abuzz about this unprecedented step, taking sides about whether he deserved a Nobel.

“If I had not been born, would MRI have existed? I don’t think so,” he said.

His supporters believe that he was passed over for the prize in part because of his belief in creationism. A full explanation may come to light when the Nobel’s archives from 2003 are opened in 2053, though Damadian will never see it. He died in 2022. But the debate doesn’t matter to those experiencing pain or facing the possibility of cancer. Some 60 million MRI scans are performed each year, and patients are simply grateful for the machine that provides the answers.

Shifting to clean energy sources can provide enormous benefits for public health in the near term while mitigating climate change in the longer term. Danielle Lawry

Eliminating air-pollution emissions from energy-related activities in the United States would prevent more than 50,000 premature deaths each year and provide more than $600 billion in benefits annually from avoided illness and death, according to a new UW study.

The study reports the health benefits of removing dangerous fine particulates released into the air by electricity generation, transportation, industrial activities, and building functions like heating and cooking. These are also major sources of carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change, since they predominantly rely on burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas.

“Our work provides a sense of the scale of the air-quality health benefits that could accompany deep decarbonization of the U.S. energy system,” says Nick Mailloux PhDx’24, lead author of the study and a graduate student at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. “Shifting to clean energy sources can provide enormous benefit for public health in the near term while mitigating climate change in the longer term.”

UW professor Jonathan Patz, senior author of the study, thinks it could motivate more action on climate change.

“My hope is that our research findings might spur decision makers grappling with the necessary move away from fossil fuels to shift their thinking from burdens to benefits,” he says.

Farmer, Zillner, and Joel Fait helped create the George Fait Family Pediatric Specialty Clinics to ensure world-class health care for generations to come. John Maniaci, UW Health

While attending his 50th class reunion at UW–Madison in 2000, the late George Fait ’50 first learned of a philanthropic opportunity related to the American Family Children’s Hospital (AFCH). He had seven grandsons and a history of generously supporting the UW, and so pediatric medicine was close to his heart.

“Having lived in Madison and been a supporter of the UW for more than 60 years, my family and I made a unanimous decision to support the American Family Children’s Hospital,” he said at the time. “Being able to contribute to this world-class children’s hospital is both an honor and a privilege. The new facility will be a beneficial legacy to all the children and families who pass through its doors.”

Before he died in 2013, Fait involved his entire family, including his three children, Leslie Farmer, Diane Zillner ’84, and Joel Fait ’82, along with their spouses, in a transformational $3 million gift to create the George Fait Family Pediatric Specialty Clinics at AFCH. The clinics include 41 exam rooms, radiology labs, special procedure rooms, teaching and education spaces, and rehabilitation facilities. The more the Fait family became involved in the planning, the more they were drawn to the project.

“We wish no child would ever have to use the clinic, but seeing how warm and inviting it is will make any child’s hospitalization the best possible experience,” says Farmer. “We are really excited and happy to be a part of it.”

As trustee of the George A. Fait Trust and a long-time family friend, Jay Lengfeld ’81 has assisted the family with supporting research and services at AFCH and the UW Carbone Cancer Center. “George worked very hard to earn his wealth and was generous in sharing it to help improve other people’s lives,” Lengfeld says. In 2022, Lengfeld oversaw an additional $2.6 million gift from the trust that went to AFCH and the UW Carbone Cancer Center.

The Faits’ continued support is also helping to improve clinical programs, enhance services, and enable leaders to respond to the hospital’s greatest needs. Because of their generosity, these facilities will ensure world-class health care for generations to come, serving children with acute issues such as cancer and heart ailments.

“My brother, sister, and I want to fulfill our father’s wishes to make a significant contribution to benefit the entire community,” says Zillner. “We wanted it to be something that would live on and really help people.”

Kiana Beaudin trained as a physician assistant but became the executive director of health for the Ho-Chunk Nation. Andy Manis

Kiana Beaudin ’10, MPAS’15 got into the field of health care because of her father.

“My dad got cancer,” she says. “And I was Daddy’s girl.”

Beaudin grew up in Madison, where her mother was a librarian in the UW’s College Library and her father was on the faculty at UW Law School. He succumbed to cancer when she was just 13, and while he was ill, she accompanied him to appointments, amazed at the technology but more impressed with the professionals who worked so hard to heal him. She considered medical school but decided to focus on becoming a physician assistant rather than an MD. “That was a better fit for me,” she says. “It appealed to me because I would be able to spend more time with my patients than a typical MD would.”

After graduation, she spent a decade in practice before she received a higher calling. In the summer of 2019, Marlon WhiteEagle, the president of the Ho-Chunk Nation, asked Beaudin to take on the role of executive director of health in his administration. She accepted, not out of ambition but obligation.

“It was the way in which he asked me,” she says. “He didn’t say, ‘Oh, hey, do you want to take this position?’ If he had, I’d have said no, I don’t want to do that, because patient care is my passion. I never thought about leadership and policy. But he said, ‘I need you to help. I’m asking you to help our people.’ When he framed it that way, I felt I couldn’t refuse.”

Less than a year after she accepted the role of executive director, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, upending public health efforts around the world. Beaudin had begun her job with straightforward goals: to cut red tape and encourage more preventive health care. Once COVID arrived, she found herself dealing with the pandemic in many ways. COVID restrictions shut down casinos — a major employer — which led to layoffs and a broader range of health issues. But though her work is vital, she intends to step down in July 2023. She misses the personal contact.

Being in a clinic, she says, “felt carefree. I’m looking forward to going back.”

Boutilier hopes research like his will nudge automated external defibrillators closer to mainstream implementation. Everdrone

As a kid, Justin Boutilier would get roped into helping his dad, a paramedic and firefighter, perform automated external defibrillator (AED) demonstrations. Two decades later, Boutilier, now a UW assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering, is reimagining how AEDs can save more lives.

Boutilier has detailed the framework for designing a network of AED-outfitted, autonomous flying drones, which could allow the life-saving devices to more quickly reach people suffering cardiac arrest. In out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, survival rates drop by as much as 10 percent for each minute that passes without treatment.

“Ambulances are not fast enough for this, especially in nonurban areas, so drones are just such a good fit,” says Boutilier, whose research harnesses optimization and machine-learning techniques to improve health care quality, access, and delivery. “They’re super fast with straight-line flight. And then AEDs are a relatively light payload, so it suits the drone. The best applications for drones in health care are things that are light and where time is of the essence.”

In January, an off-duty doctor used an AED delivered by an autonomous drone to save a 71-year-old man’s life in Sweden — the first such documented successful rescue. Boutilier hopes that research like his will help nudge the technology closer toward mainstream implementation.

A high-magnification of the hydrogel (in blue) encapsulating T cell-activating platelets (in red) and nanoparticles that release a drug to inhibit tumor-boosting cells (in green). This gel inhibited the growth of cancer cells after surgical removal of different types of tumors.

A new biodegradable gel improves the immune system’s ability to keep a variety of cancerous tumors at bay in mice, according to experiments led by pharmacy professors Quanyin Hu and Seungpyo Hong and colleagues in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

Surgery is an excellent treatment for many tumors, but small numbers of cancer cells that remain after the operation can allow tumors to grow back. To counteract this process, the researchers developed their gel to slowly release two key components — the drug pexidartinib and platelets bound to immune-stimulating antibodies.

The gel significantly slowed the growth of lingering cancer cells and increased the lifespan of mice. It also greatly reduced the spread of metastasizing breast cancer. A bonus was that the gel had insignificant side effects.

In recent years, Hong and Hu have independently been developing new ways to control cancers without traditional chemotherapy, which has severe side effects. By collaborating, they hope to supercharge their ability to continue testing creative approaches that could benefit human patients in the future.

Videos could hold dogs’ attention long enough to assess critical information about visual function. Danielle Lamberson Philipp

Television and YouTube programming to keep dogs entertained is becoming more common. But it’s not clear how the canines engage with the shows and what kind most appeal to them.

Now, a new survey is asking dog owners to help shed some light on these questions. The results could lay the groundwork for developing better ways to assess vision in dogs.

According to Freya Mowat, an assistant professor at the UW School of Veterinary Medicine and the School of Medicine and Public Health’s Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, previous efforts to develop an eye test for dogs have failed.

But Mowat believes videos could hold a dog’s attention long enough to assess critical information about visual function. To better understand what dogs might be most attracted to on-screen, Mowat is conducting a “Dog TV” survey that asks people to provide information on their dogs’ screen-viewing habits.

Ultimately, the study could help pups to age more gracefully by providing understanding of declining vision. Because dogs are subjected to the same environmental and lifestyle factors as their owners, learning what influences their visual decline could help researchers to optimize human eye health as well.

“This pan-coronavirus vaccine is basically preparing for the future,” Kawaoka says. Bryce Richter

Viruses can be wily adapters, changing their identities to find new hosts and thwart efforts to stop them. That’s why UW–Madison researchers and their collaborators are making progress toward developing universal vaccines against some of the planet’s most harmful pathogens, including the virus family responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last fall, the National Institutes of Health announced it was investing in three teams developing a vaccine that would work against a broad range of coronaviruses. Among them is a research collaboration, the Pan-Coronavirus Vaccine consortium, led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka, professor of pathobiological sciences at the UW School of Veterinary Medicine.

“This pan-coronavirus vaccine is basically preparing for the future,” Kawaoka says.

Kawaoka and his collaborators are looking for a vaccine or vaccines that could train our immune systems to respond to a broad array of coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, and their variants.

Before 2019, no one had ever seen SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. If successful, a pan-coronavirus vaccine would also protect against other as-yet-unknown coronaviruses.

“The pan-coronavirus vaccine may not be as effective as a vaccine that is specific for a particular strain, like SARS-CoV-2,” says Kawaoka. But the trade-off for reduced effectiveness is increased coverage.

Adds Peter Halfmann ’00, PhD’08, research associate professor in the Kawaoka lab at the UW’s Influenza Research Institute, it would mean “having something ready to go in case something did pop up.”

The researchers will also study how long vaccine-induced immunity lasts and whether vaccination can prevent transmission between animals.

Kawaoka expects that vaccine candidates they identify now will be at least five years away from the clinic, but his lab and others will continue to invest time, energy, and resources toward solving these challenges.

The future may depend on it.

Nobles says that “a large share of the population have long or highly irregular cycles and could not reasonably learn about their pregnancy in time to seek a legal abortion” under laws in effect or under consideration. Destiny Schaefer

More than one in five women experience irregular menstrual cycles that could keep them from learning they are pregnant until it’s too late to access an abortion under some state laws in effect or under consideration.

Researchers from UW–Madison and the National Institutes of Health analyzed anonymized data on 1.6 million menstrual cycles provided by more than 267,000 adults to a cycle-tracking app. Twenty-two percent of the people in the study had irregular menstrual cycles that differed in length from one cycle to the next by seven or more days.

“For almost everyone, the first symptom of a pregnancy is a missed period,” says UW sociology professor Jenna Nobles, coauthor of the study. “But a large share of the population have long or highly irregular cycles and could not reasonably learn about their pregnancy in time to seek a legal abortion under laws that set limits at detectable fetal cardiac activity or six weeks.”

The age group most likely to have cycles of irregular length is 18- to 24-year-olds — also the ages with the highest abortion rates in the United States.

Experts in reproductive health know that variation in menstrual-cycle length is common, according to Nobles, but the new study is remarkable for demonstrating how short the window can be between a missed period and fetal cardiac activity.