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Yamanaka in 2010
September 4, 1962 |
Higashiōsaka, Osaka, Japan
|Fields||Stem cell research|
Nara Institute of Science and Technology
Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease
|Alma mater||Kobe University
Osaka City University
|Known for||Induced pluripotent stem cell|
|Notable awards||Meyenburg Prize (2007)
Massry Prize (2008)
Robert Koch Prize (2008)
Shaw Prize (2008)
Gairdner Foundation International Award (2009)
Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award (2009)
BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2010)
Wolf Prize (2011)
McEwen Award for Innovation (2011)
Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (2012)
Millennium Technology Prize (2012)
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2012)
Shinya Yamanaka (山中 伸弥 Yamanaka Shin'ya?, born September 4, 1962) is a Japanese Nobel Prize-winning stem cell researcher. He serves as the director of Center for iPS Cell (induced Pluripotent Stem Cell) Research and Application and a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences at Kyoto University; as a senior investigator at the UCSF-affiliated J. David Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, California; and as a professor of anatomy at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Yamanaka is also a past president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR).
He received the 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine category. Also he received the Wolf Prize in Medicine in 2011 with Rudolf Jaenisch; the Millennium Technology Prize in 2012 together with Linus Torvalds. In 2012 he and John Gurdon were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery that mature cells can be converted to stem cells. In 2013 he was awarded the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for his work.
- 1 Education
- 2 Professional career
- 3 Interest in sports
- 4 Recognition
- 5 Yamanaka's Nobel Prize–winning research in iPS cells
- 6 Honors
- 7 See also
- 8 References
- 9 External links
Yamanaka was born in Higashiōsaka Japan in 1962. After graduating from Tennōji High School attached to Osaka Kyoiku University, he received his M.D. at Kobe University in 1987 and his PhD at Osaka City University Graduate School in 1993. After this, he went through a residency in orthopedic surgery at National Osaka Hospital and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, San Francisco.
Afterwards he worked at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, USA and Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. Yamanaka is currently a Professor at Kyoto University, where he directs its Center for iPS Research and Application. He is also a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes as well as the director of the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application.
Between 1987 and 1989, Yamanaka was a resident in orthopedic surgery at the National Osaka Hospital. His first operation was to remove a benign tumor from his friend Shuichi Hirata, a task he could not complete after one hour when a skilled surgeon would have taken ten minutes or so. Some seniors referred to him as "Jamanaka", a pun on the Japanese word for obstacle.
From 1993 to 1996, he was at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease. Between 1996 and 1999, he was an assistant professor at Osaka City University Medical School, but found himself mostly looking after mice in the laboratory, not doing actual research.
His wife advised him to become a practicing doctor, but instead he applied for a position at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology. He stated that he could and would clarify the characteristics of embryonic stem cells, and this can-do attitude won him the job. From 1999–2003, he was an associate professor there, and started the research that would later win him the 2012 Nobel Prize. He became a full professor and remained at the institute in that position from 2003–2005. Between 2004 and 2010, Yamanaka was a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences. Currently, Yamanaka is the director and a professor at the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application at Kyoto University.
In 2006, he and his team generated induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) from adult mouse fibroblasts. iPS cells closely resemble embryonic stem cells, the in vitro equivalent of the part of the blastocyst (the embryo a few days after fertilization) which grows to become the embryo proper. They could show that his iPS cells were pluripotent, i.e. capable of generating all cell lineages of the body. Later he and his team generated iPS cells from human adult fibroblasts, again as the first group to do so. A key difference from previous attempts by the field was his team's use of multiple transcription factors, instead of transfecting one transcription factor per experiment. They started with 24 transcription factors known to be important in the early embryo, but could in the end reduce it to 4 transcription factors – Sox2, Oct4, Klf4 and c-Myc.
Interest in sports
Yamanaka practiced judo (2dan black belt) and played rugby as a university student. He also has a history of running marathons. After a 20-year gap, he competed in the inaugural Osaka Marathon in 2011 as a charity runner with a time of 4:29:53. He also took part in the 2012 Kyoto Marathon to raise money for iPS research, finishing in 4:03:19. He also ran in the second Osaka Marathon on November 25, 2012.
In 2007, Yamanaka was recognized as a "Person Who Mattered" in the Time Person of the Year edition of Time Magazine. Yamanaka was also nominated as a 2008 Time 100 Finalist. In June 2010, Yamanaka was awarded the Kyoto Prize for reprogramming adult skin cells to pluripotential precursors. Yamanaka developed the method as an alternative to embryonic stem cells, thus circumventing an approach in which embryos would be destroyed.
Yamanaka has been listed as one of the 15 Asian Scientists To Watch by Asian Scientist magazine on May 15, 2011. In June 2011, he was awarded the inaugural McEwen Award for Innovation; he shared the $100,000 prize with Kazutoshi Takahashi, who was the lead author on the paper describing the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells.
In October 2012, he and fellow stem cell researcher John Gurdon were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent."
Yamanaka's Nobel Prize–winning research in iPS cells
Background-different cell types
There are different types of stem cells. These are some types of cells that will help in understanding the material.
|Totipotent cells||can give rise to all other cell types
totipotency remains through the first few cell divisions ex. the fertilised egg
|Pluripotent cells||Can develop into all cell types (except those that form the amniotic sac and the placenta)
The early embryo consists mainly of pluripotent stem cells
|Multipotent cells||Can develop into any of a family of closely related cell types
ex) blood multipotent cells can develop into various blood cells
Background-different stem cell techniques
|Somatic cell replication Embryonic Stem (ES) cell||No immune rejection
Theoretically patient-specific transplantations possible
|No case of success
Many human egg cells needed
Ethical issue: Can clone humans
|Fertilized egg ES cell||Pluripotent
Much research done Immune rejection reducible via stem cell bank
|Fertilized egg usage
(can't use for clinical trial)
|Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) Cell||No ethical issue
|Adult stem cell||Much research
No immune rejection Safe (clinical trials)
|Not as potential as ES cell|
Historical Background leading up to Yamanaka's research
The prevalent view during the early 20th century was that mature cells were permanently locked into the differentiated state and cannot return to a fully immature, pluripotent stem cell state. They thought that cellular differentiation can only be a unidirectional process. Therefore, non-differentiated egg/early embryo cells can only develop into specialized cells. However, stem cells with limited potency (adult stem cells) remain in bone marrow, intestine, skin etc. to act as a source of cell replacement.
The fact that differentiated cell types had specific patterns of proteins suggested irreversible epigenetic modifications or genetic alterations to be the cause of unidirectional cell differentiation. So, cells progressively become more restricted in the differentiation potential and eventually lose pluripotency.
In 1962, John B. Gurdon demonstrated that the nucleus from a differentiated frog intestinal epithelial cell can generate a fully functional tadpole via transplantation to an enucleated egg. Gurdon used somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) as a method to understand reprogramming and how cells change in specialization. He concluded that differentiated somatic cell nuclei had the potential to revert to pluripotency. This was a paradigm shift during the time. It showed that a differentiated cell nucleus has retained the capacity to successfully revert to an undifferentiated state, with the potential to restart development (pluripotent capacity).
However, the question still remained whether an intact differentiated cell could be fully reprogrammed to become pluripotent.
Shinya Yamanaka proved that introduction of a small set of transcription factors into a differentiated cell was sufficient to revert the cell to a pluripotent state. Yamanaka focused on factors that are important for maintaining pluripotency in embryonic stem (ES) cells. Knowing that transcription factors were involved in the maintenance of the pluripotent state, he selected a set of 24 ES cell transcriptional factors as candidates to reinstate pluripotency in somatic cells.
First, he collected the 24 candidate factors. When all 24 genes encoding these transcription factors were introduced into skin fibroblasts, few actually generated colonies that were remarkably similar to ES cells. Secondly, further experiments were conducted with smaller numbers of transcription factors added to identify the key factors, through a very simple and yet sensitive assay system. Lastly, he identified the four key factors. They found that 4 transcriptional factors (Myc, Oct3/4, Sox2 and Klf4) were sufficient to convert mouse embryonic or adult fibroblasts to pluripotent stem cells (capable of producing teratomas in vivo and contributing to chimeric mice).
These pluripotent cells are called iPS (induced pluripotent stem) cells; they appeared with very low frequency. iPS cells can be selected by inserting the b-geo gene into the Fbx15 locus. The Fbx15 promoter is active in pluripotent stem cells which induce b-geo expression, which in turn gives rise to G418 resistance; this resistance helps us identify the iPS cells in a culture.
Moreover, in 2007, Yamanaka and his colleagues found iPS cells with germ line transmission (via selecting for Oct4 or Nanog gene). Also in 2007, they were the first to produce human iPS cells.
However, there are some difficulties to overcome. The first is the issue of the very low production rate of iPS cells, and the other is the fact that the 4 transcriptional factors are shown to be oncogenic.
Nonetheless, this is a truly fundamental discovery. This was the first time an intact differentiated somatic cell could be reprogrammed to become pluripotent. This opened up a completely new research field.
Further research and future prospects
Since the original discovery by Yamanaka, much further research has been done in this field, and many improvements have been made to the technology. Here we discuss the improvements made to Yamanaka's research as well as the future prospects of his findings.
1. The delivery mechanism of pluripotency factors has been improved. At first retroviral vectors, that integrate randomly in the genome and cause deregulation of genes that contribute to tumor formation, were used. However, now, non-integrating viruses, stabilised RNAs or proteins, or episomal plasmids (integration-free delivery mechanism) are used.
2. Transcription factors required for inducing pluripotency in different cell types have been identified (e.g. neural stem cells).
3. Small substitutive molecules were identified, that can substitute for the function of the transcription factors.
4. Transdifferentiation experiments were carried out. They tried to change the cell fate without proceeding through a pluripotent state. They were able to systematically identify genes that carry out transdifferentiation using combinations of transcription factors that induce cell fate switches. They found trandifferentiation within germ layer and between germ layers. E.g.) exocrine cells to endocrine cells, fibroblast cells to myoblast cells, fibroblast cells to cardiomyocyte cells, fibroblast cells to neurons
5. Cell replacement therapy with iPS cells is a possibility. Stem cells can replace diseased or lost cells in degenerative disorders and they are less prone to immune rejection. However, there is a danger that it may introduce mutations or other genomic abnormalities that render it unsuitable for cell therapy. So, there are still many challenges, but it is a very exciting and promising research area. Further work is required to guarantee safety for patients.
6. Can medically use iPS cells from patients with genetic and other disorders to gain insights into the disease process. - Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Rett syndrome, spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), α1-antitrypsin deficiency, familial hypercholesterolemia and glycogen storage disease type 1A. - For cardiovascular disease, Timothy syndrome, LEOPARD syndrome, type 1 and 2 long QT syndrome - Alzheimer’s, Spinocerebellar ataxia, Huntington’s etc.
7. iPS cells provide screening platforms for development and validation of therapeutic compounds. For example, kinetin was a novel compound found in iPS cells from familial dysautonomia and beta blockers & ion channel blockers for long QT syndrome were identified with iPS cells.
Yamanaka's research has “opened a new door and the world’s scientists have set forth on a long journey of exploration, hoping to find our cells’ true potential.”
- 2007 Osaka Science Prize
- 2007 Inoue Prize for Science
- 2007 Asahi Prize
- 2007 Meyenburg Cancer Research Award
- 2008 Yamazaki-Teiichi Prize in Biological Science & Technology
- 2008 Robert Koch Prize
- 2008 Medals of Honor (Japan) (with purple ribbon)
- 2008 Shaw Prize in Life Science & Medicine
- 2008 Sankyo Takamine Memorial Award
- 2008 Massry Prize from the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California
- 2009 Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Research
- 2009 Gairdner Foundation International Award
- 2009 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
- 2010 March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology
- 2010 Kyoto Prize in Biotechnology and medical technology
- 2010 Balzan Prize in biology
- 2010 Person of Cultural Merit
- 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Biomedicine Category
- 2011 Albany Medical Center Prize in biomedicine
- 2011 Wolf Prize in Medicine
- 2011 King Faisal International Prize
- 2011 McEwen Award for Innovation
- 2012 Millennium Technology Prize
- 2012 Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences
- 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- 2012 Order of Culture
- 2013 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences
- 2013 Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
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|Wikimedia Commons has media related to Shinya Yamanaka.|
- The Shinya Yamanaka Lab, CiRA, Kyoto University
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|Millennium Technology Prize winner