Friday, October 12, 2012

Noble Prize for medicine goes to researcher who discovered ethical alternative to killing human embryos

"When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters," said Dr. Yamanaka. ... "I thought, we can't keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way."

When Shinya Yamanaka examined a human embryo under a microscope, the trajectory of his research changed and he set out to find a way to manipulate adult cells and create cells with the same properties as embryonic stem cells without killing human embryos.  While many scientists believed this was impossible, Yamanaka’s desire to find an ethical alternative to killing human embryos created a shock wave in the scientific community. 

In 2007, Dr. Yamanaka found “another way” and forever changed the focus of stem cell research when he announced that he had successfully reverted normal adult skin cells into an embryonic‑like state by changing only four genes in the cells. The cells, in later experiments, have been shown to have the same properties as embryonic stem cells. Since 2007 other researchers have made advances in techniques used to transform regular cells into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.

For his discovery, Yamanaka has been given numerous awards but none more prestigious than when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in October of 2012.  Rarely, is the Nobel Prize for Medicine given out just five years after a discovery.

Yamanaka’s work had clear implications for the prolife movement. Prior to Yamanaka’s discovery, many scientists hoped to create patient-specific embryonic stem cells by creating cloned human embryos and killing them for their stem cells. This, if it was ever successful, would have required the creation and destruction of thousands of human embryos and would necessitate countless women to undergo the dangerous process of donating human eggs.

Yamanaka’s work changed all this as he was able to show patient-specific cells, with the same properties as embryonic stem cells, could be created rather easily without human cloning and the destruction of human embryos. 

Since Yamanaka’s work was published, numerous scientists who previously favored human cloning for research have abandoned their efforts to create cloned human embryos and instead have focused on iPS cell research. 

Learn more about stem cell research at www.stemcellresearchcures.com.