Professor John Gurdon of the UK and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan were recently awarded a shared Nobel prize for medicine or physiology based on their pioneering work in the area of stem cells. They both did influential research in changing adult cells into stem cells.
In 1962, Gurdon first showed that genetic information inside of a cell can be used to create an entirely new organism. He took genetic information from an intestinal cell of a frog and placed this material inside a frog egg. The clone then proceeded to develop into a normal tadpole. This technique was the foundation of the work involving Dolly the sheep, the very first cloned mammal.
Yamanaka used a different approach forty years later, finding a way to reset the genetic information. Instead of transferring the genetic material from one cell and implanting this inside an egg, he added genes to skin cells which then turned into stem cells.
The Nobel committee stated that their work "revolutionized our understanding of how cells and organisms develop," and that "these discoveries have also provided new tools for scientists around the world and led to remarkable progress in many areas of medicine."
The director of the Wellcome Trust, Sir Mark Walport, said that these men "have demonstrated conclusively that it is possible to turn back the clock on adult cells, to create all the specialised cell types in the body. Their work has created the field of regenerative medicine, which has the potential to transform the lives of patients with conditions such as Parkinson's, stroke, and diabetes."
Although research in this field has been going on for decades, we have only recently begun to use the knowledge clinically to treat patients. As more clinical trials and studies progress, the use of stem cells in medicine will surely grow. I am excited to see these advances occurring all the time.
