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https://scmp.com/article/1056473/nobel-prize-briton-japanese-stem-cell-work
World

Nobel prize awarded to Briton, Japanese for stem cell work

Thomas Perlmann of Karolinska Institute presents Sir John B Gurdon of Britain and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan as winners of the 2012 Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology, in Stockholm, on Monday. Photo: AP

British researcher John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan won this year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine on Monday for discovering that mature, specialised cells of the body can be reprogrammed into stem cells – a discovery that scientists hope to turn into new treatments.

Scientists want to harness that reprogramming to create replacement tissues for treating diseases like Parkinson’s and diabetes, and for studying the roots of diseases in the labouratory.

The prize committee at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute said the discovery has “revolutionised our understanding of how cells and organisms develop.”

Gurdon showed in 1962 – the year Yamanaka was born – that the DNA from specialised 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.

In 1997, the cloning of Dolly the sheep by other scientists showed that the same process Gurdon discovered in frogs would work in mammals.

More than 40 years after Gurdon’s discovery, in 2006, Yamanaka showed that a surprisingly simple recipe could turn mature cells back into primitive cells, which in turn could be prodded into different kinds of mature cells.

Basically, the primitive cells were the equivalent of embryonic stem cells, which had been embroiled in controversy because to get human embryonic cells, human embryos had to be destroyed. Yamanaka’s method provided a way to get such primitive cells without destroying embryos.

“The discoveries of Gurdon and Yamanaka have shown that specialised cells can turn back the developmental clock under certain circumstances,” the committee said. “These discoveries have also provided new tools for scientists around the world and led to remarkable progress in many areas of medicine.”

Just last week, Japanese scientists reported using Yamanaka’s approach to turn skin cells from mice into eggs that produced baby mice.

Gurdon, 79, has served as a professor of cell biology at Cambridge University’s Magdalene College and is currently at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, which he founded. Yamanaka, 50, worked at the Gladstone Institute in San Francisco and Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. He is currently at Kyoto University and also affiliated with the Gladstone Institute. Yamanaka is the first Japanese scientist to win the Nobel medicine award since 1987.

“From now on, I’d like to make a contribution to society in a real sense. I feel a great sense of responsibility,” Yamanaka said at a news conference in Japan. “I want to use our medical breakthrough for medical purposes.”

Choosing Yamanaka as a Nobel winner just six years after his discovery was unusual. The Nobel committees typically reward research done more than a decade ago, to make sure it has stood the test of time.

In 2010, the Nobel Prize in physics went to two researchers whose discoveries were also published six years earlier. In 2006, two American scientists won the medicine prize eight years after their work was published.

Prize committee member Juleen Zierath said Gurdon and Yamanaka’s discoveries, which also earned them a Lasker award for basic research in 2009, could hold “immense potential,” including in developing treatments for Parkinson’s disease and in making cells that produce insulin. However, she added that therapeutic implications are still far away.

The idea of reprogramming cells has also been put to work in basic research on disease, through an approach sometimes called “disease in a dish.”

The reprogramming allows scientists to create particular kinds of tissue they want to study, like lung tissue for studying cystic fibrosis, or brain tissue for Huntington’s disease. By reprogramming cells from patients with a particular disease, they can create new tissue with the same genetic background, and study it in the lab. That can give new insights into the roots of the problem.

In addition, that approach allows them to screen drugs in the laboratory for possible new medicines.

Experts welcomed the announcement, praising the duo for their groundbreaking and influential discoveries in a field riddled with ethical debates.

“Everyone who works on developmental biology and on the understanding of disease mechanisms will applaud these excellent and clear choices for the Nobel prizes,” said John Hardy, professor of Neuroscience at University College London. “Countless labs’ work builds on the breakthroughs they have pioneered.”

Goran Hansson, the secretary of the prize committee, said he had reached both winners by phone before the announcement. He said they were looking forward to coming to Stockholm to collect the 8 million kronor (US$1.2 million) award on December 10.

The medicine award was the first Nobel Prize to be announced this year. The physics award will be announced on Tuesday, followed by chemistry on Wednesday, litreature on Thursday and the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

The economics prize, which was not among the original awards, but was established by the Swedish central bank in 1968, will be announced on October 15. All prizes will be handed out on December 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.

Last year’s medicine award to Canadian-born Ralph Steinman, American Bruce Beutler and French scientist Jules Hoffmann briefly created some confusion when it was announced that Steinman had died a few days earlier. Posthumous prizes are normally not allowed, but the award was left unchanged since the judges were not aware of Steinman’s death when they selected him as a winner.