Nobel Prize in medicine awarded to Sir John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka.
The 2012 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded on Monday October, 8th to Sir John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for work that revolutionized the understanding of how cells and organisms develop. The Nobel Assembly's announcement at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, is the first for what will be a series of prizes announced this week.
Gurdon, 79, of Dippenhall, England, and Yamanaka, 50, of Osaka, Japan, share the prize jointly for their discovery that "mature, specialised cells can be reprogrammed to become immature cells capable of developing into all tissues of the body," according to the Nobel Assembly, which consists of 50 professors at the Karolinska Institute.
Gurdon discovered in 1962 that the cells are reversible in an experiment with an egg cell of a frog. Yamanaka discovered more than 40 years later how mature cells in mice could be reprogrammed to become immature stem cells "that are able to develop into all types of cells in the body," the assembly said in a statement.
"These groundbreaking discoveries have completely changed our view of the development and cellular specialisation. We now understand that the mature cell does not have to be confined forever to its specialised state," the Nobel Assembly said.
By reprogramming human cells, scientists have created new opportunities to study diseases and develop methods for diagnosis and therapy.