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Shinya Yamanaka MD, PhD, a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes has won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of how to transform ordinary adult skin cells into cells that, like embryonic stem cells, can then develop into other cell types.
He called them induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. We invite you to learn more about how Dr. Yamanaka's discovery has altered the fields of cell biology and stem cell research—opening promising new prospects for the future of both personalized and regenerative medicine.
In this section of the Gladstone website—dedicated to Dr. Yamanaka's work—you'll find more details on stem cell biology and history, as well as details on how Dr. Yamanaka splits his time between San Francisco and Kyoto, Japan.
Nobel: The Prizes and the man behind them
The Nobel Prize is a series of international awards bestowed in a number of categories including Chemistry, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine. The Nobel Prize is awarded to individuals who profoundly advance their field of study, and is widely considered to be the world's most prestigious award.
The Nobel Prizes are named after the well-traveled and well-educated Alfred Nobel, a Swedish scientist, inventor and businessman born in 1833. While in Paris in the middle of the century, Nobel met Ascanio Sobrero, an Italian chemist who invented nitroglycerine—a highly explosive liquid that at the time was considered too dangerous to be of practical use. However, Nobel's interest in developing this compound led him to discover that when he mixed nitroglycerine with a fine sand, he could stabilize it for formulations that allowed its explosive properties to be detonated on command. His discovery made him a very wealthy man, fostering an astonishing 355 patents and spawning a total of 87 companies over his lifetime. This enormous fortune furnishes the prize money handed out to Nobel Laureates today. The first Nobel prizes were awarded in 1901—five years after Mr. Nobel's death—and are handed out every year on December 10, the anniversary of his death.
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