STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Britain's Gurdon and Japan's Yamanaka won Nobel Prize in medicine
Their work has "provided new tools for scientists around the world"
Some cells can be reprogrammed into blank slates that can become any kind of cell
9:50AM EST October 8. 2012 -
STOCKHOLM (AP) ? A British researcher and a Japanese scientist won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine on Monday for discovering that ordinary cells of the body can be reprogrammed into stem cells, which then can turn into any kind of tissue ? a discovery that may led to new treatments.
Scientists want to build on the work by John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka to create replacement tissues for treating diseases like Parkinson's and diabetes, and for studying the roots of diseases in the laboratory ? without the ethical dilemma posed by embryonic stem cells.
In announcing the $1.2 million award, the Nobel committee at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute said the discovery has "revolutionized our understanding of how cells and organisms develop."
Gurdon showed in 1962 ? the year Yamanaka was born ? that the DNA from specialized cells of frogs, like skin or intestinal cells, could be used to generate new tadpoles. That showed the DNA still had its ability to drive the formation of all cells of the body.
"My goal, all my life, is to bring this stem cell technology to the bedside, to patients, to clinics ..."
Telephone interview with Shinya Yamanaka following the announcement of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 8 October 2012. The interviewer is Adam Smith, Editorial Director of Nobel Media.
[Shinya Yamanaka] Hello
[Adam Smith] Hello, may I speak to Professor Yamanaka please?
[SY] Yes, speaking.
[AS] Oh hello, this is Adam Smith calling from the Nobel Prize website in Stockholm. We have a traditional of recording very short interviews with new Nobel Laureates. Would you be able to speak for just a very few minutes?
[SY] Okay.
[AS] Thank you. First of all, our sincere congratulations on the award of the Nobel Prize.
[SY] Oh, thank you very much. It is a tremendous honour to me. Especially I heard that I am going to share the prize with Dr. John Gurdon, so I feel more honoured, because I respect him a lot.
[AS] He established the principle of gene conservation in differentiated cells, half a century ago. And so there was this very long run up then very rapidly you have transformed the field by creating induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.
[SY] Yes, well I was able to initiate my project because of his experiments fifty years ago. Actually, he published his work in 1962. And that was the year when I was born. So I really feel just great, feel honoured.
[AS] There's a lovely symmetry about that. And it shows the progress of science, and one can't be too rushed in expecting things to happen.
[SY] Indeed.
[AS] And indeed, it's the fiftieth anniversary of your birth and of his publications.
[SY] Oh yes exactly. Yes. I just turned out to be fifty.
[AS] Congratulations on that also, then.
[SY] Thank you very much.
[AS] May I ask, what were you doing when the call from Stockholm came?
[SY] Well actually I was at home. I was doing some housework. So I was very surprised.
[AS] So you were actually doing some housework, you were cleaning the house or something?
[AS] Can you recall your initial reaction to the call?
[SY] Well, so I was kind of alarmed by my secretary, who is still at my office. So she got a call from Stockholm, and asked about my phone number. So she kind of gave me an alert. But still, you know, I was not sure at all. So when I received the call, I was surprised. Almost, you know, I just thought wow, it's very ... a phonecall from Stockholm. I just couldn't believe it.
[AS] That's lovely. That's very nice. Indeed it hasn't been long. It was only in 2006 that you created the first iPS cells, so it hasn't been long.
[SY] So I strongly feel that this is, that I am able to receive this award because of John Gurdon and also many other researchers in the field. This field has a long history, starting with John Gurdon. So I feel very lucky. I may have played some important role in this long history, but it was not myself who initiated this field. So that's my feeling right now.
[AS] I understand and it's so nice that the two of you are tied together by the award and will be in Stockholm together in December to accept it.
[SY] Yes, that's great, yes.
[AS] When you come to Stockholm we have a longer chance, happily, to interview you and so talk more.
[SY] Okay
[AS] But I just wanted ask you one final question, which was what your greatest hopes for stem cells technologies are at the moment? What do you hope will be the first benefit?
[SY] Well, I will bring this technology to clinics. I really want to help as many patients as possible. As you may know, I started my career as a surgeon 25 years ago. But it turned out that I am not talented as a surgeon. So I decided to change my career, from clinics to laboratories. But I still feel that I am a doctor, I am a physician, so I really want to help patients. So my goal, all my life, is to bring this technology, stem cell technology to the bedside, to patients, to clinics.
[AS] Thank you. And I understand that iPS cells will, in fact, be going into the clinic for trials next year for the first time.
[SY] Yes, indeed. Yes.
[AS] Okay. Well, thank you very much indeed. And I wish a lovely evening of celebration.
[SY] Okay, thank you so much
[AS] It was a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you. Congratulations again.
The Healer
How Shinya Yamanaka transformed the stem-cell war and made everyone a winner.
By William Saletan|Posted Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2012, at 12:05 AM ET
Shinya Yamanaka, co-winner of a 2012 Nobel Prize.
Shinya Yamanaka, a scientist at Kyoto University, loved stem-cell research. But he didn’t want to destroy embryos. So he figured out a way around the problem. In a paper published five years ago in Cell, Yamanaka and six colleagues showed how “induced pluripotent stem cells” could be derived from adult cells and potentially substituted, in research and therapy, for embryonic stem cells. Today, that discovery earned him a Nobel Prize, shared with British scientist John Gurdon. But the prize announcement and much of the media coverage missed half the story. Yamanaka’s venture wasn’t just an experiment. It was a moral project.
In the introduction to their Cell paper, Yamanaka and his colleagues outlined their reasons for seeking an alternative to conventional embryonic stem-cell research. “Ethical controversies” came first in their analysis. Technical reasons?the difficulty of making patient-specific embryonic stem cells?came second. After the paper’s publication, Yamanaka told a personal story, related by the New York Times:
Inspiration can appear in unexpected places. Dr. Shinya Yamanaka found it while looking through a microscope at a friend’s fertility clinic. … [H]e looked down the microscope at one of the human embryos stored at the clinic. The glimpse changed his scientific career. “When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,” said Dr. Yamanaka. … “I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.”
（続きです）
Yamanaka’s misgivings weren’t absolute. In 2009, when President Obama lifted the U.S. ban on federal funding of embryo-destructive stem-cell research, Yamanaka attended the ceremony to show his support. Yamanaka explained his ambivalence to New Scientist in December 2007. “Patients' lives are more important than embryos,” he said. But “I do want to avoid the use of embryos if possible.”
From September 2009 to June 2012, Yamanaka won three major international science prizes. Each citation recognized the moral significance of his work. In 2009, the Lasker Foundation selected him for its prestigious medical research award, noting that his technique overcame “the controversy that accompanies methods based on embryonic stem cells.” In 2010, the Inamori Foundation awarded him the Kyoto Prize, again citing “ethical concerns” that had burdened previous embryonic stem-cell research. In 2012, the Technology Academy of Finland gave him its Millennium Technology Prize, explicitly for “Ethical Stem Cells Research.” The academy praised Yamanaka for making possible “stem cell research into drugs, treatments and transplants without having to use human embryos.”
The Nobel committee, however, made no mention of Yamanaka’s moral achievement. Not in its presentation, not in its press release, not in its interview with the laureate. It credited him only with developing “new tools” to study disease and develop therapies. Many reporters took the same approach. In its 600-word story, CNN ignored the ethics of Yamanaka’s work. The Los Angeles Times called restrictions on embryo destruction mere “headaches” for scientists. The New York Times said Yamanaka’s work, like other stem-cell technologies, had “generated objections from people who fear, on ethical or religious grounds, that scientists are pressing too far into nature’s mysteries and the ability to create life artificially.”
That’s completely wrong. Even before Yamanaka’s landmark paper, pro-lifers were all over his work. They loved it. The Vatican had followed his research with interest for years. When Cell published his paper, a pro-life coalition immediately declared his method “superior to cloning as a means of obtaining patient-specific pluripotent stem cells.” In a homily distributed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Rigali declared that Yamanaka’s story about looking into a fertility-clinic microscope showed how “God can use a helpless embryo to change a human heart.” People at the National Right to Life Committee were openly rooting for Yamanaka to win a Nobel.
Now he’s won it. And we shouldn’t turn away from the moral aspect of this achievement just because it gratifies the conservative side of the old stem-cell debate. Yamanaka transformed that debate forever. He tore down the wall between preserving embryos and saving lives. He did what only a scientist could have done: He made it possible for both sides to win. In the words of Julian Savulescu, an ethicist and supporter of embryonic stem-cell research, Yamanaka “deserves not only a Nobel Prize for Medicine, but a Nobel Prize for Ethics.”
Congratulations, Dr. Yamanaka. And thank you. From all of us.
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Scientists from Britain and Japan shared a Nobel Prize on Monday for the discovery that adult cells can be transformed back into embryo-like stem cells that may one day regrow tissue in damaged brains, hearts or other organs.
John Gurdon, 79, of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, Britain and Shinya Yamanaka, 50, of Kyoto University in Japan, discovered ways to create tissue that would act like embryonic cells, without the need to collect the cells from embryos.
They share the $1.2 million Nobel Prize for Medicine, for work Gurdon began 50 years ago and Yamanaka capped with a 2006 experiment that transformed the field of "regenerative medicine" - the search for ways to cure disease by growing healthy tissue.
"These groundbreaking discoveries have completely changed our view of the development and specialization of cells," the Nobel Assembly at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute said.
All of the body starts as stem cells, before developing into tissue like skin, blood, nerves, muscle and bone. The big hope is that stem cells can grow to replace damaged tissue in cases from spinal cord injuries to Parkinson's disease.
Scientists once thought it was impossible to turn adult tissue back into stem cells. That meant new stem cells could only be created by taking them from embryos, which raised ethical objections that led to research bans in some countries.
As far back as 1962 Gurdon became the first scientist to clone an animal, making a healthy tadpole from the egg of a frog with DNA from another tadpole's intestinal cell. That showed that developed cells carry the information to make every cell in the body - decades before other scientists made world headlines by cloning the first mammal from adult DNA, Dolly the sheep.
More than 40 years later, Yamanaka produced mouse stem cells from adult mouse skin cells by inserting a small number of genes. His breakthrough effectively showed that the development that takes place in adult tissue could be reversed, turning adult tissue back into cells that behave like embryos.
Stem cells created from adult tissue are known as "induced pluripotency stem cells", or iPS cells. Because patients may one day be treated with stem cells from their own tissue, their bodies might be less likely to reject them.
"The eventual aim is to provide replacement cells of all kinds," Gurdon's institute explains on its website.
"We would like to be able to find a way of obtaining spare heart or brain cells from skin or blood cells. The important point is that the replacement cells need to be from the same individual, to avoid problems of rejection and hence of the need for immunosuppression."
In just six years, Yamanaka's paper has already been cited more than 4,000 times in other scientists' work.
In a news conference in Japan, he thanked his team of young researchers: "My joy is very great. But I feel a grave sense of responsibility as well."
Gurdon spoke of his own unlikely career as a young man who loved science but was steered away from it at school, only to take it up again at university.
He still keeps an old school report in a frame on his desk: "I believe he has ideas about becoming a scientist... This is quite ridiculous," his teacher wrote. "It would be a sheer waste of time, both on his part and of those who have to teach him."
EARLY STAGES
The science of iPS cells is still in early stages. Among concerns is the fear that implanted cells could grow out of control and develop into tumors.
Some scientists say stem cells from embryos may prove more useful against disease than iPS cells, and the ethics of working with embryos should be defended.
Nevertheless, since Yamanaka published his findings the discoveries have already produced advances. The techniques are being used to grow cells in laboratories to study disease, the chairman of the awards committee, Urban Lendahl, told Reuters.
"You can't take out a large part of the heart or the brain or so to study this, but now you can take a cell from, for example, the skin of the patient, reprogramme it, return it to a pluripotent state, and then grow it in a laboratory," he said.
"The second thing is for further ahead. If you can grow different cell types from a cell from a human, you might - in theory for now but in future hopefully - be able to return cells where cells have been lost."
Thomas Perlmann, Nobel Committee member and professor of Molecular Development Biology at the Karolinska Institute said: "Thanks to these two scientists, we know now that development is not strictly a one-way street."
"There is lot of promise and excitement, and difficult disorders such as neurodegenerative disorders, like perhaps Alzheimer's and, more likely, Parkinson's disease, are very interesting targets."
For now, both men said their scientific work continues.
Asked why he still keeps his schoolteacher's discouraging report, Gurdon said: "When you're having problems, like when an experiment doesn't work - which often happens - it's nice to remind yourself that perhaps after all you're not so good at this job and the schoolmaster may have been right."
(Reporting by Patrick Lannin, Alistair Scrutton, Ben Hirschler, Kate Kelland, Kiyoshi Takenaka, Chris Wickham and Peter Graff; writing by Peter Graff; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
Shinya Yamanaka wins the
Nobel Prize for medicine, 2012.
For the second time in a row, first Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn in 2010, and Dr. Shinya Yamanaka in 2012, a featured speaker of the Cell Press-TNQ India Distinguished Lectureship Series wins the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Congratulations Prof. Yamanaka, from all of us at TNQ. It was a great moment when you visited us earlier this year. And it is a proud moment now.
Shinya Yamanaka, the Japanese physician and celebrated adult stem cell researcher, delivered the Third Edition of The Cell Press-TNQ India Distinguished Lectureship Series in Bengaluru, Chennai, and New Delhi in January-February 2012. His Lecture is titled “New Era of Medicine with iPS Cells”. The schedule of the Lectures is given below.
Professor Yamanaka’s scientific breakthrough was the creation of embryonic-like stem cells from adult skin cells. Robert Lanza, Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Cell Technology and Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University, has said that Yamanaka's work "is likely to be the most important stem-cell breakthrough of all time. The ability to generate an unlimited supply of patient-specific stem cells will revolutionize the future of medicine."
Professor Yamanaka divides his time between Kyoto and San Francisco. He serves as the Director of the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application and as Professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences at Kyoto University. He is also a Senior Investigator at the UCSF-affiliated J. David Gladstone Institutes and a Professor of Anatomy at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
Shinya Yamanaka’s career in science has been a distinguished one. He was awarded the Albert Lasker Prize in 2009 and The Wolf Prize in 2011. These cap a long list of awards that are detailed below.
More about Professor Yamanaka’s Research
The stated goal of Professor Yamanaka’s laboratory has been to generate pluripotent stem cells from human somatic cells.
The ability to "reprogram" adult cells back into an earlier, undifferentiated state has helped to reshape the ethical debate over stem-cell research by providing an approach for obtaining pluripotent stem cells that does not require that they be taken from an embryo.
Earlier observations that somatic cells could be reprogrammed either by nuclear transfer into oocytes or by fusion with embryonic stem (ES) cells suggested that oocytes and ES cells contain factors that induce reprogramming. By identifying these factors, Yamanaka reasoned that it should be possible to induce pluripotency in somatic cells without using embryos or oocytes.
The significance of this is that ES cells, derived from the inner cell mass of mammalian blastocysts, can grow indefinitely while maintaining pluripotency. These properties have led to expectations that ES cells might be useful to treat a host of degenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Diabetes, as well as injuries including spinal cord injury. However, clinical application of human ES cells raises issues about the ethical use of human embryos and problems with tissue rejection after implantation. By generating pluripotent cells directly from somatic cells, it may be possible to circumvent these issues. Once established, these cells may be used in regenerative medicine and also to elucidate disease mechanisms and to screen drugs.
Awards
2007 Osaka Science Prize
2007 Inoue Prize for Science
2007 Asahi Prize
2007 Meyenburg Cancer Research Award
2008 Yamazaki-Teiichi Prize in Biological Science & Technology
2008 Robert Koch Prize
2008 Medals of Honor (Japan) (Medal with Purple Ribbon)
2008 Shaw Prize in Life Science & Medicine
2008 Sankyo Takamine Memorial Award
2009 Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Research
2009 Gairdner Foundation International Award
2009 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
2010 March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology
2010 Kyoto Prize in Biotechnology and Medical Technology
2010 Balzan Prize in Biology
2010 Person of Cultural Merit
2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Biomedicine Category
2011 Albany Medical Center Prize in Biomedicine
2011 Wolf Prize in Medicine
2011 King Faisal International Prize
