Scientists from Britain and Japan shared a Nobel Prize yesterday for the discovery that adult cells can be transformed back into embryo-like stem cells that may one day regrow tissue in damaged brains, hearts or other organs.
John Gurdon (79) of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, Britain, and Shinya Yamanaka (50) of Kyoto University in Japan, discovered ways to create tissue that would act like embryonic cells, without the need to collect the cells from embryos.
They share the $1.2 million Nobel Prize for Medicine, for work Mr Gurdon began 50 years ago and Mr Yamanaka capped with a 2006 experiment that transformed the field of “regenerative medicine” – the search for ways to cure disease by growing healthy tissue.