Stem cell breakthroughs
I’ve been following the research of stem cell since 1997, though I still work with some neural stem cells , I didn’t have chance to work in the top labs in the world. The idea is first heated in 1990’s when embryonic stem cells were cultured from mouse, and famous Dolly was born….then from the application purpose of treating diseases with stem cell transplantation, and ethical conficts of using human embryo, scientists are thinking of using cells from patient itself and easily disected and enriched in large numbers, to reverse the cell fate from aging to young…for the last decades, there has been a great leap in this area, especially the success of Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, who turned the human skin cells from patient into embryoic stem cells by introducing 4 genes into the cell. This solve the key problem of stem cell therapy….though it’s still far from the final application in clinic, this will make the stem cell research hotter and hotter. There are several papers come out from Nature and Science recently, and authors are all from Harvard, they are doing the same thing, but it seems more practical, such as making stem cell line with skin cells from DS patients; inducing pancreatic beta cells from glands cells….And the mile stones are mapped and the leading scientists are remembered…
Shinya Yamanaka Kyoto University
James Thomson University of Wisconsin
Kevin Eggan Harvard University
George Q. Daley Harvard Stem Cell Institute
Douglas A. Melton Harvard University
Irving Weissman Stanford University
Fred H. Gage Salk Institute
Even Y. Snyder Harvard University
Martin Evans University of Cambridge
Gail R Martin UCSF
Joseph Altman MIT
Alxander Maksimov Russian Histologist
