MADISON, Wis. — If you’ve lived in Wisconsin long enough, you’ve likely heard the complaint. “Sure, the University of Wisconsin does some gee-whiz research, but unless you’re an endangered snake in South America or a bleached coral reef in the South Pacific, how does it bring jobs, wealth and a better life back home to people in the Badger state?”
With all due respect to those who study snakes and coral reefs, answers to that perennial question are in the making. One recent example is the $3.3 billion Microsoft data center plan, which has tapped the knowledge of computer scientists at the UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee and will continue to do so.
Also on the horizon is the promising work of WARF Therapeutics, which is taking a unique-to-Wisconsin approach to anchoring an emerging medical industry within a 100-mile radius of the State Capitol. The benefits to Wisconsin and patients, here and elsewhere, are potentially immense.
WARF Therapeutics’ portfolio includes innovations tied to “theranostics,” a term for delivery of radioactive drugs that can be diagnostic and therapeutic in the same dose. In short, it’s about pinpoint targeting of potentially malignant cells for both diagnosis with one drug and destruction with another.