Local students take part in stem cell camp | Local | apg …

Four Prentice students headed to the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison in mid-July for a camp geared at illuminating stem cell research and related technology for rural youth.

The local group, Hailey Enders, Carli Hora, Jesse Isaacson and Joseph Jast, joined 12 other students hailing from Tomah, Winter, and North Crawford in this unrivaled four-day experience known as the "Discovery Summer Science Camp.

Prentice School instructor Mike Dunbar said that the program, running from July 13 to July 16 gave students from our rural area the chance to see what real researchers in Madison are doing, and, because the students participated in many lab activities, helped them feel like part of the experience there.

Students got a chance to see research facilities defining the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery and other divisions of learning at UW-Madison, including the Chemistry Department. In addition, they got a firsthand look at technology used in the UW-Health Clinical Simulation Laboratory, set up at the UW- Hospital.

Their stops at research facilities brought students opportunities to run real tests used by practicing lab workers. Afterwards, students had the benefit of learning about the science underlying those hands-on activities with talks from active researchers in connected fields, according to Dunbar.

The technologies used there and the laboratory facilities provided a unique insight for these students into what is current and cutting edge, which most high school students anywhere would never get to see, Dunbar stated.

As one genuine lab task, young scientists had the opportunity to conduct live stem cell passaging, which consists of taking cultured stem cells and creating, or passaging, six entirely new cultures from the original cell material, according to Dunbar.

Via the discussion that surrounded this camp segment and the required readings students completed ahead of the camp, budding researchers learned about something known as induced pluripotent" stem cells, or IPS cells. Those cells are harvested from an adults skin and with lab manipulation, are returned to stem cell form, sparing researchers from needing to use the cells of embryos for research.

The possibilities for scientific gain with use of these cells are numerous as students found out from the talks given by researchers later in the camp, Dunbar stated.

Another session in the lab delivered a close-up look at the process of cryopreservation, made possible by the use of liquid nitrogen.

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Local students take part in stem cell camp | Local | apg ...