Gail Martin, PhD

Since 1981, when UCSFs Gail Martin, PhD, co-discovered embryonic stem cells in mice and coined the term embryonic stem cell, UCSF has been a key player in the stem cell field.

The success in 1998 by the University of Wisconsins James Thomson in deriving human embryonic stem cells from embryos propelled the stem cell research field forward.

Beginning in the late 1990s, UCSFs Roger Pedersen, PhD, was one of two University scientists nationwide the other being James Thomson, DVM, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin to pioneer the human embryonic stem cell field. Following Thomsons 1998 discovery of a technique for deriving human embryonic stem cells from donated embryos left over following in vitro fertilization efforts, Pedersens lab derived two of its own lines of cells using the same technique.

In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, a senior investigator and the L.K. Whittier Foundation Investigator in Stem Cell Biology at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease and a professor of anatomy at UCSF, developed the method for inducing skin cells from mice into becoming like pluripotent stem cells and called them iPS cells. In 2007, Yamanaka did the same with adult human skin cells.

Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD

Yamanakas experiments revealed that adult skin cells, when treated with four pieces of DNA (now called the Yamanaka factors), can induce skin cells to revert back to their pluripotent state. His discovery has since led to a variety of methods for reprogramming adult cells into stem cells that can become virtually any cell type such as a beating heart cell or a neuron that can transmit chemical signals in the brain. This allows researchers to create patient-specific cell lines that can be studied and used in everything from drug therapies to regenerative medicine.In between and since, there has been major progress in scientists understanding of stem cells.

Today, fueled in part by the robust research enterprise at UCSF, the field is burgeoning. Yamanaka now commutes between Japan and San Francisco, where he is a professor of anatomy at UCSF and a senior investigator at the UCSF-affiliated J. David Gladstone Institute for Cardiovascular Disease.

At UCSF, Arnold Kriegstein, MD, PhD, director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF, leads one of the largest and most comprehensive programs of its kind in the United States.

In about 125 labs, basic science researchers carry out studies in cell culture and animals aimed at understanding healthy cell function and disease progression and developing treatment strategies for a broad spectrum of disorders, including heart disease, diabetes, neurological diseases such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons disease and spinal cord injury and cancer. Clinical research teams have begun one of the first early-stage stem cell clinical trials in the United States, and other potential trials are on the horizon.

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Milestones in Stem Cell Science

STOCKHOLM (AP) A British researcher and a Japanese scientist won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine on Monday for discovering that ordinary cells of the body can be reprogrammed into stem cells, which then can turn into any kind of tissue a discovery that may led to new treatments.

Scientists want to build on the work by John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka to create replacement tissues for treating diseases like Parkinson's and diabetes, and for studying the roots of diseases in the laboratory without the ethical dilemma posed by embryonic stem cells.

In announcing the 8 million kronor ($1.2 million) award, the Nobel committee at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute said the discovery has "revolutionized our understanding of how cells and organisms develop."

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

At the time, the discovery had "no obvious therapeutic benefit at all," Gurdon told reporters in London.

"It was almost 50 years before the value the potential value of that basic scientific research comes to light," he said.

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 specialized 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."

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Nobel prize to Briton, Japanese for stem cell work

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

Gurdon, 79, a researcher at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., and Yamanaka, 50, a professor at Kyoto University in Japan, will share the 8 million-kronor ($1.2 million) prize, the Nobel Assembly said today in Stockholm. The pairs findings have created new opportunities to study diseases and develop methods for diagnosis and therapy, the assembly said in a statement.

Gurdons feat, in 1962, paved the way in 1996 for the cloning of Dolly the sheep and, 10 years later, for Yamanaka, who turned mouse skin cells into stem cells with the potential to become any cell in the body. That achievement was lauded by some politicians and religious figures as a more ethical way to make stem cells because it doesnt destroy human life.

This field has had a long history, starting with John Gurdon, Yamanaka, who was born the same year Gurdon published his achievement, said in an interview on the Nobel Assemblys website. I was able to initiate my project because of his experiments 50 years ago.

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 that mature cells from specific parts of an animals body retain all the genetic information they had as immature stem cells. He 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.

Gurdon overturned the prevailing view that as cells differentiate, they lose genes and their ability to generate other cells of any kind, said Alan Colman, the executive director of the Singapore Stem Cell Consortium, who gained his doctorate under Gurdon at Cambridge.

Hes amazingly passionate, Colman said in an interview before the award was announced. He was the sort of supervisor who you found it difficult to get appointments with, not because he was flying around the world, but because he was doing experiments all the time.

Gurdon was answering e-mails in his laboratory when he received the call from Sweden today about the prize, he said in an interview on the Nobel Assemblys website. His first reaction was, Its amazing if its really true, he said. Could it be that someones pulling your leg? That has happened before.

Gurdon will celebrate at a reception that his institute is hosting today, and then hell be back to work early tomorrow, he said at a London news conference today.

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Stem-Cell Pioneers Gurdon, Yamanaka Win Nobel Prize

LONDON (Reuters) - The Nobel Prize-winning discovery of how to reprogram ordinary cells to behave like embryonic stem cells offers a way to skirt around ethical problems with human embryos, but safety concerns make their future use in treating disease uncertain.

While researchers have already applied the scientific breakthroughs of Britain's John Gurdon and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka to study how diseases develop, making such cells into new treatments will involve a lot more checks.

Stem cells act as the body's master cells, providing the source material for all other cells. They could transform medicine by regenerating tissue for diseases ranging from blindness to Parkinson's disease.

Creating embryo-like stem cells without destroying embryos gets round a key controversy by avoiding the need to process embryos left over at fertility clinics - a system that has led to political objections in the United States and elsewhere.

Reprogrammed cells - known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells - offer an ethically neutral alternative. They have been a source of intense research since Yamanaka discovered their potential in 2006, building on work that Gurdon did in frogs and tadpoles 40 years earlier.

SAFETY CONCERNS

Recently, however, different research groups have noticed problems with iPS cells, suggesting they may not be as good as embryonic ones. In one study, iPS cells died more quickly and another found multiple genetic mutations, raising concerns that they could cause tumors.

Despite this, Japanese researchers hope to test iPS cells in clinical trials for a form of blindness as early as next year - catching up with recent successful eye trials using embryonic stem cells.

Researchers in the West are generally more wary.

"There is a bit of a divergence between Japan and the rest of the world on this," Chris Mason, professor of regenerative medicine at University College London, told Reuters.

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Analysis: Reprogrammed cells open new medical window

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Scientists from Britain and Japan shared a Nobel Prize on Monday for the discovery that adult cells can be transformed back into embryo-like stem cells that may one day regrow tissue in damaged brains, hearts or other organs.

John Gurdon, 79, of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, Britain and Shinya Yamanaka, 50, of Kyoto University in Japan, discovered ways to create tissue that would act like embryonic cells, without the need to harvest embryos.

They share the $1.2 million Nobel Prize for Medicine, for work Gurdon began 50 years ago and Yamanaka capped with a 2006 experiment that transformed the field of "regenerative medicine" - the field of curing disease by regrowing healthy tissue.

"These groundbreaking discoveries have completely changed our view of the development and specialization of cells," the Nobel Assembly at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute said.

All of the body's tissue starts as stem cells, before developing into skin, blood, nerves, muscle and bone. The big hope for stem cells is that they can be used to replace damaged tissue in everything from spinal cord injuries to Parkinson's disease.

Scientists once thought it was impossible to turn adult tissue back into stem cells, which meant that new stem cells could only be created by harvesting embryos - a practice that raised ethical qualms in some countries and also means that implanted cells might be rejected by the body.

[Related: Facts about the Nobel Prize for Medicine]

In 1958, Gurdon was the first scientist to clone an animal, producing a healthy tadpole from the egg of a frog with DNA from another tadpole's intestinal cell. That showed developed cells still carry the information needed to make every cell in the body, decades before other scientists made headlines around the world by cloning the first mammal, Dolly the sheep.

More than 40 years later, Yamanaka produced mouse stem cells from adult mouse skin cells, by inserting a few genes. His breakthrough effectively showed that the development that takes place in adult tissue could be reversed, turning adult cells back into cells that behave like embryos. The new stem cells are known as "induced pluripotency stem cells", or iPS cells.

"The eventual aim is to provide replacement cells of all kinds," Gurdon's Institute explains on its website.

Excerpt from:
UK, Japan scientists win Nobel for stem cell breakthroughs

Reuters

This undated handout photo shows iPS cells derived from adult human dermal fibroblasts released by Kyoto University Professor Shinya Yamanaka at Center for iPS Cell Research and Application of Kyoto University in Kyoto, western Japan.

By Reuters

Scientists from Britain and Japan shared a Nobel Prize on Monday for the discovery that adult cells can be transformed back into embryo-like stem cells that may one day regrow tissue in damaged brains, hearts or other organs.

John Gurdon, 79, of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, Britain and Shinya Yamanaka, 50, of Kyoto University in Japan, discovered ways to create tissue that would act like embryonic cells, without the need to harvest embryos.

They share the $1.2 million Nobel Prize for Medicine, for work Gurdon began 50 years ago and Yamanaka capped with a 2006 experiment that transformed the field of "regenerative medicine" - the field of curing disease by regrowing healthy tissue.

"These groundbreaking discoveries have completely changed our view of the development and specialization of cells," the Nobel Assembly at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute said.

Photoblog: Click for a close-up viiew of the Nobel Prize-winning stem cell research

All of the body's tissue starts as stem cells, before developing into skin, blood, nerves, muscle and bone. The big hope for stem cells is that they can be used to replace damaged tissue in everything from spinal cord injuries to Parkinson's disease.

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Nobel Prize awarded for stem cell breakthroughs