Nobel Prize Rockets Stem Cell Program to New Heights

Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD

Stem cell science blasted across front pages worldwide when Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The UCSF professor and senior investigator at the UCSF-affiliated Gladstone Institutes received the award for discovering how to transform ordinary adult skin cells into cells that, like embryonic stem cells, are pluripotent capable of becoming any cell in the human body.

The news bringing UCSF's total of Nobel laureates to five brought fresh attention to something UCSF long ago sensed and seized: the promise of regeneration medicine for repairing or replacing damaged cells, tissues, and even whole organs.

Gail Martin, PhD

More than three decades ago, UCSF researcher Gail Martin, PhD, co-discovered embryonic stem cells in mice, coining the term. The cells were discovered separately and simultaneously by University of Cambridge investigators Martin Evans, PhD, and Matthew Kaufman, PhD.

Embryonic stem cells brought hope to billions, giving scientists new avenues for understanding and treating some of the worlds most complex health conditions heart disease, diabetes, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons disease, spinal cord injury, and many more.

Despite the cells tremendous promise, political pressure to stop embryonic stem cell research began to brew. In a sign of the times, the US Congress passed a 1995 amendment, known as Dickey-Wicker, that prohibited the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from funding research in which human embryos are destroyed.

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Nobel Prize Rockets Stem Cell Program to New Heights