Yamanaka and Gurdon Win Nobel For Reprogramming Cells

          Shinya Yamanaka of the University of Kyoto, Japan, was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery that a person’s cells can be reprogrammed to pluripotency – meaning they have the ability to form most other cell types in the body. Yamanaka shares the prize with John B. Gurdon of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, UK, who is known as the “godfather of cloning.”  

  

       After stem cells were initially isolated from mice, Yamanaka’s team found four genes that, in combination, could be introduced to adult cells to turn them into embryonic-like cells. The resulting so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells could in turn be coaxed into mature cell types such as neurons and gut cells. Yamanaka’s findings, published in 2006, gave way to new cell-based models diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and other disorders.