Stem Cell Researchers Win Nobel: Researchers in Japan and the U.S. in 2007 announced they had found a way to turn regular human skin cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells. By activating a handful of dormant genes, teams led by Dr. Shinya Yamanaka at Japan’s Kyoto University and Dr. James Thompson at the University of Wisconsin were able to coax the cells back in time to a point in embryonic development before they’d committed to becoming a particular type of tissue.
The reprogrammed cells, known as “induced pluripotent stem cells,” genetically matched to the donor, could then be used to grow tissues for future use in tissue replacement therapies including a range of things from regeneration of damaged heart tissue to Parkinson’s to spinal-cord injury.
The discovery could provide a virtually unlimited supply of embryonic stem cells without the moral baggage of or need to use human embryos, cloning or human eggs. It also takes such research out of the political arena back into the realm of science, where it belongs.
“It’s a bit like learning how to turn lead into gold,” says Dr. Robert Lanza, a stem cell researcher at Advanced Cell Technology, a Massachusetts-based research firm. For this discovery, and the cures it will lead to, it should warrant the next Nobel Prize for Medicine.