Stem-Cell Pioneers from Britain, Japan Win Medical Nobel Prize (Geneva)

GENEVA John B. Gurdon transferred DNA between a tadpole and a frog to cloned the first animal. Shinya Yamanaka used Gurdons concept to turn ordinary skin into potent stem cells. Both won the Nobel Prize for medicine Monday.

Gurdon, 79, of Britain, and Yamanaka, 50, of Japan, will share the 8 million-kronor ($1.2 million) prize, the Nobel Assembly said Monday in Stockholm. Their findings have led to remarkable progress in understanding diseases and finding new therapies, the assembly said in a statement.

Gurdons work paved the way in 1996 for the cloning of Dolly the sheep and, 10 years later, for Yamanakas research. By adding the right genes to an adult skin cell, Yamanaka developed a technology to create stem cells without destroying human embryos. The discovery was lauded by some politicians and religious figures as a more ethical way to make stem cells because it doesnt destroy human life.

John B. Gurdon challenged the dogma that the specialized cell is irreversibly committed to its fate, the assembly said. Shinya Yamanaka discovered more than 40 years later, in 2006, how intact mature cells in mice could be reprogrammed to become immature stem cells. Textbooks have been rewritten, and new research fields have been established.

Stem cells are found in human embryos and in some tissues and organs of adults, and have the potential to develop into different types of cells. Thats spurred scientists to look at ways of harnessing their power to treat diseases such as Alzheimers, stroke, diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Gurdon showed in 1962 that mature cells from specific parts of an animals body retain all the genetic information they had as immature, unspecific cells. That made it possible to turn back the clock and unlock their potential to become any other cell type.

The prevailing thought was that as cells differentiate, they lose their ability to generate other cells of any kind, Gurdon, now a distinguished group leader at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, England, said in a 2009 interview when he and Yamanaka were honored with an Albert Lasker award for medical research.

Gurdon took a cell from a tadpoles gut, extracted the nucleus, and inserted it into the egg cell of an adult frog whose own nucleus had been removed. That reprogrammed egg cell developed into a tadpole with the genetic characteristics of the original tadpole, and subsequent trials yielded adult frogs. This showed that mature cells retain the ability to become other cells.

Yamanakas breakthrough, first announced at a meeting in Toronto in 2006, stunned the scientific world by showing that even as cells of the body age, they retain in latent form the unlimited potential they had as embryonic cells. His feat was finding the genetic formula that reawakened that potential.

When I first saw his results I was gobsmacked, Alan Colman, the executive director of the Singapore Stem Cell Consortium who was involved in cloning Dolly the sheep, said in a telephone interview before the award was announced. We all knew what he was doing but no one gave him the slightest chance of succeeding. It was remarkable and remains remarkable.

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Stem-Cell Pioneers from Britain, Japan Win Medical Nobel Prize (Geneva)