Announcing the 2012 Nobel Prize for Medicine

The 2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine belonged to mature cell reprogramming of two scientists, John Gurdon and Yamanaka.

These two scientists have demonstrated the fate of a reversible cell. They have shown that cells can be 'locked' in a special situation that can 'remember' and return to the state of flexibility they have in early infancy.

Gurdon's 1962 study permanently changed the notion that adult cells were stuck in their condition. In a series of experiments, he transplanted a cell nucleus containing DNA from an adult frog's intestinal cell into a frog egg cell (the egg cell nucleus was removed). The cells developed into a normal tadpole, proving that DNA contained all the information needed to make an embryo.

Shinya Yamanaka scientist

More than forty years later, Yamanaka, Kyoto University, Japan has fundamentally changed the debate about stem cells when he created versatile cells. This cell is capable of developing into any type of cell in the body. He tried to understand the factors that make stem cells related from embryos. Yamanaka used viruses to insert specific genes into skin cells and realized that only four genes were needed to convert mouse skin cells into stem cells. This technology has been used to convert adult human cells into embryonic cells and even to convert skin cells directly into the heart or brain cells.

Gurdon said he focused on this research only for one purpose, which is to answer the question: Are all of our cells the same gene? It does not seem that this study will be useful for humans. Gurdon is the head of the Cambridge University research institute, England. According to him, if you wait a bit, or it may be quite a long time, the discoveries of scientific nature will bring some benefit to people.

Gurdon's technique of transferring nuclei from mature cells to developing egg cells was applied in the 90s to create Dolly sheep and many other cloned animals. However, implementing these techniques with human cells is still considered a question.

At the time of Yamanaka's discovery of the technique, the ethical debate is going on around the use of stem cells. It seems that Yamanaka's cells are making the problem simple. Jonathan Moreno, a physiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, said. But reprogramming cells will give rise to more ethical problems than people initially thought.

The researchers used the same technique as Yamanaka's technique to create the eggs and sperm of mice in the lab. This can lead to a change in the mode of human reproduction.

"Human cell reprogramming has not been used clinically, but researchers hope this method will one day be used to replace cells and tissues for patients. The cell also showed promise to study the development of the disease and to test drugs, " said Larry Goldstein, a scientist and neuroscience stem cellist at the University of California, San Diego.