Happy 62nd birthday to the Japanese Nobel laureate, Sinya Yamanaka, whose pioneering work in the science of stem cells led him to identify the “Yamanaka Factors”— 4 different genetic transcription factors that he used to turn any adult human cell into a stem cell. He shared the prize jointly with Sir John Gordon of England, and his discovery was described as world-changing. READ a bit more about his work… (1962)

The discovery that mature, fully-formed cells from the skin or elsewhere could be reprogrammed to turn themselves back into pluripotent stem cells meant that stem cell research could not only be conducted without relying on fetal tissues from the placenta or umbilical cord, but also with the patient’s own genetic material. These two realities which arose in the wake of Yamanaka

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