Japanese scientist and the stem cell story

This year's Nobel Prize in Medicine laureate has expressed his determination to use induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to treat debilitating diseases for which there are currently no effective treatments.

Professor Shinya Yamanaka. Photo: ucsf.edu.

In his annual lecture at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, ahead of tomorrow's Nobel Prize ceremony, Japanese professor Shinya Yamanaka shared the story that led to the important scientific discovery of successfully producing iPS thanks to a series of unexpected discoveries.

Before talking about the interesting discoveries from the experiments that his teachers assigned him, Professor Yamanaka talked about two great teachers who helped him in his early days of science, Professor Katsuyuki Miura, Osaka City University and Tom Innerarity, who was then a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute, USA. Yamanaka said that these two people always knew how to encourage and motivate young scientists even when the results of the experiments gave results that contradicted the hypotheses they put forward. He said that he tried to be a good teacher like them but it was "very difficult".

Another great teacher was "nature" - the "person" who brought Yamanaka unexpected results, and also the "person" who gave him completely new plans.

According to the Japanese scientist, he could not imagine for the first time how long it would take before identifying the key factors needed to reprogram somatic cells into iPS cells. He wondered if it would take 10, 20, 30 years or even longer to reach this discovery.

However, it took his team just six years before they finally made a major breakthrough in 2006 when Yamanaka discovered an alternative to destroying human embryos, thereby clearing away the moral and ethical obstacles to stem cell technology.

Professor Yamanaka, 50, allowed young researchers to work in his lab, especially Kazutoshi Takahashi, a lecturer at Kyoto University, and two others, to speed up his new discovery. “Without the dedication of these three people, we would never have been able to produce iPS cells, at least in our lab,” he said. “I feel extremely proud of the young scientists.”

Yamanaka also said that research conducted at the Kyoto University Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), a research institute of which he is the director, is expected to help test conditions and screen drugs for diseases involving motor neurons such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease of muscle weakness for which there is currently no specific treatment.

The day before, scientist John Gurdon, 79, who shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine with Yamanaka this year and is an honorary professor at the University of Cambridge, also gave the annual lecture. Yamanaka said he felt honored to be chosen to share the prize with Professor Gurdon, who pioneered the field of nuclear reprogramming half a century ago, when Yamanaka was just born.

After the lecture, Professor Yamanaka said he felt somewhat relieved after completing one of the important events of his visit to Stockholm and gave himself a “60%” mark in his English lecture. Yamanaka’s wife, Chika, 50, said she felt emotional listening to her husband’s lecture because it brought back many memories.

According to (Vietnam+) - VT