Page 23 - Revista científica IESBrugulat 2016/17

BIOTECHNOLOGY INS JOSEP BRUGULAT MAGAZINE

T H E S T E M - C E L L R E V O L U T I O N I S

C O M I N G — S L O W L Y

2001, President George W. Bush issued an executive order banning
federal funding for new sources of stem cells developed from
preimplantation human embryos. The action stalled research and
discouraged scientists

By WALLACE RAVVEN JAN. 16, 2017 Five years later, a Kyoto
University scientist, Shinya
Yamanaka, and his graduate
student, Kazutoshi

Takahashi, re-energized the
field by devising a technique
to “reprogram” any adult
cell, such as a skin cell, and
coax it back to its earliest
“pluripotent” stage. From
there it can become any type

of cell, from a heart muscle cell
to a neuron.

The breakthrough sidestepped the embryo controversy, offering researchers an
unlimited supply of stem cells. Dr. Yamanaka shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in

Physiology or Medicine for reprogramming mature cells into what are now called
induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. Still, the march toward new treatments
has been halting.
Dr. Yamanaka directs Kyoto University’s Center for iPS Cell Research and
Application. He also leads a small research lab at the Gladstone Institutes, affiliated
with the University of California, San Francisco, where his group studies the
molecular mechanisms that underlie pluripotency and the factors that induce

reprogramming.