FRI AM News: WisBusiness: the Podcast with Craig Atwood, JangoBio; UW Regents vote to advance $730M budget proposal

August 21, 2026

— This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Craig Atwood, founder and CEO of JangoBio.

The Fitchburg-based company is developing stem cell therapies to treat various diseases and conditions, including one product pipeline aimed at restoring the body’s hormone balance that becomes disrupted through aging.

“So that we can get our hormones back to youthful levels, so that we can mitigate diseases of aging and hopefully get that next 20, 30, 50 years of healthy longevity,” he said. “It’s a very ambitious program, but we are making great progress.”

While the development is still “relatively early on,” the path ahead requires pre-clinical data to get authorization to proceed with human clinical trials. The company has successfully created a stem cell product that produces target hormones, demonstrating its effectiveness in rodent models.

“This essentially means that we can treat what’s known as hypogonadism, that loss of ovarian and testicular hormones that everybody develops as they move through menopause in women and andropause in men,” Atwood said.

After tracking the treated rodents over their lifetimes, the company found an increase of about 33% to healthy longevity.

“This is quite a significant increase in reaching our goal,” he said.

With that proof-of-concept in hand, the next phase involves moving to a larger animal model — namely, dogs. Atwood noted about 90 million dogs live in the United States, and at least 70% of those have been reproductively sterilized, making for a prime research pool.

“We have the capacity to be able to not only generate data that’s required by the FDA to move into a human clinical trial, but we can also meet that market, getting hormones back up to youthful levels in dogs,” he said.

A second stem cell pipeline aims to initially treat osteoarthritis for dogs and eventually in humans as well. This joint disease can cause pain and inflammation, impacting mobility. Treating this condition represents a “quicker way” to start generating revenue to fuel the company’s scientific endeavors, Atwood said.

After treating 21 dogs, the company has seen “dramatic improvements” in both pain levels and mobility for all of the dogs it’s treated.

“It’s been very gratifying to see these dogs go from limping, and not being able to move really well because they’re just really in a lot of pain, to just running toward their owners,” Atwood said.

Listen to the podcast here and see the full list of WisBusiness podcasts.

— UW Board of Regents leaders say the board’s request for another $730 million in state aid is an “investment” in Wisconsin.

Regents voted yesterday to advance the biennial budget proposal, which will be considered by lawmakers as part of the state’s 2027-29 budget.

“If you look at the platform of current candidates and their parties, they talk about affordability,” Vice Regent Ashok Rai told WisPolitics. “They talk about the increased need for healthcare in the state of Wisconsin. They talk about needing more entrepreneurs in our state and driving more of our economy with our own talent. So that’s the lens our budget was built on versus previous budgets.”

The budget proposal includes a $90 million increase in state aid to train new healthcare workers and a combined $240 million in entrepreneurship, workforce and business development programs, including $50 million in new investment in student support services.

It also includes a $190 million request to fund a two-year tuition freeze for Wisconsin residents with a promise to keep tuition costs under inflation for the two years after that.

Regents President Kyle Weatherly said this week it would be “very, very difficult” to avoid raising tuition without the additional state funding, which includes $45 million to further develop the university system’s artificial intelligence capabilities.

He did not offer an estimate yesterday for how much students could see tuition increase in 2027 without the state investment, noting that tuition increases are set “much later in the year.”

Regents in June approved a 2% increase to resident tuition for the 2026-27 school year, expected to generate around $22 million in new revenue.

Weatherly said regents had not yet had “in-depth” conversations with lawmakers about the proposal but that they were “incredibly excited” to hear their reaction.

He was undeterred by GOP gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany’s pledge to freeze in-state tuition.

“He’s talking about the exact same things that we are talking about,” Weatherly said. “If you put it into ChatGPT and said ‘compare and contrast these things,’ I suspect it would come out and say they are talking about the same thing.”

A 10-year tuition freeze imposed by lawmakers ended in 2023. Average in-state tuition has increased between 2% and 5.1% annually in the years since, including fall 2026’s planned increase.

— Wisconsin’s unemployment rate remained at 3.3% in July while the state added jobs over the month and year, the Department of Workforce Development reports.

The agency yesterday rolled out the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, showing total employment was 3,036,800 last month. The state added 6,600 jobs over the month and 26,500 over the year.

The state’s unemployment rate remained below the national rate of 4.1% for the month.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s labor force participation rate held at 64.5% last month, remaining above the national rate of 61.4% for July.

— State officials have announced $31 million in funding for projects aimed at improving air quality and road congestion in Wisconsin, including replacing dozens of “outdated” diesel buses.

Gov. Tony Evers yesterday released details for the round of Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program funding, going to 13 projects around the state. This federal reimbursement program is administered by the state Department of Transportation, covering an 80% federal cost share for eligible projects.

The 2026-2030 awards includes replacing 30 diesel buses and installing transponder equipment on 77 buses and “optimizing” traffic signals at more than 30 intersections in Milwaukee County with about $12.5 million, converting a standard intersection into a roundabout in Waukesha County for $3.6 million, and creating a 4.2-mile trail in Door County for $4.7 million.

Meanwhile, the guv yesterday also announced $19 million for various infrastructure projects through the Community Development Block Grant Public Facilities program. These federal funds are distributed to low- to moderate-income communities with fewer than 50,000 population in the state.

Of the 20 awards, all but one recipient are getting $1 million for street and utilities infrastructure improvements. The village of Cameron is getting about $785,000. The guv’s office says about $37 million in matching funds from recipients is being leveraged through these awards.

Top headlines from the Healthcare Report…

— State health officials are soliciting feedback on how to spend millions in opioid settlement funds Wisconsin is getting next year, part of the $874 million total coming to the state over time.

For more of the most relevant health care news, reports on groundbreaking research in Wisconsin, links to top stories and more, sign up today for the free daily Health Care Report from WisPolitics and WisBusiness.com.

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