Ips cells

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Regenerative Medicine

Generating a human iPS cell
Human

1. Take a skin cell

Potential for the differentiation of human iPS cells 2. Introduce the four genes and culture
Intestine-like structures Cartilage Muscle Neural structures

Oct-3/4

Sox2

c-Myc

3. Pluripotent stem cell (iPS cell)

Klf4

Professor

Neural cell Cardiac cell Fat cellCartilage Etc.

Shinya Yamanaka

Born in Osaka in September 1962. After graduating from Kobe University Medical School in 1987, he went through a residency in orthopedic surgery at National Osaka Hospital. In 1989, he entered the Ph.D. program at Osaka City University Graduate School. Received his Ph.D. in 1993. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Gladstone Institute ofCardiovascular Disease, San Francisco, he took up an assistant professorship at Osaka City University Medical School and then an assistant professorship at Nara Institute of Science and Technology. In 2004, he was appointed a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences, Kyoto University. In January 2008, he was appointed director of the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CirA), which ispart of the Institute for Integrated Cell-Materials Science (iCeMS).

Human iPS cells cluster together and form planar colonies.

iPS cell

Since 2006, a research team in Japan led by Professor Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University has achieved a string of breakthroughs in the crucial field of stem cell research. Their work has been hailed around the world and has even led to speculation thatit might be a candidate for recognition through a Nobel Prize.

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Kyoto University Kyoto University was founded in 1897 and is the second-oldest university in Japan. The university has a teaching staff of approximately 3,000. Kyoto University’s basic philosophy advocates a “spirit of freedom” in academic activities. Kyoto University has many NobelLaureates among its faculty and alumni, including Hideki Yukawa, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1949.

Human iPS Cells Open a New Frontier in Medical Research

Kyoto University group leads the world in the important area of basic medical research

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t Kyoto University, Professor Yamanaka is director of the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CirA), which is part of theInstitute for Integrated Cell-Materials Science (iCeMS). He is also a professor in the Department of Stem Cell Biology at Kyoto University’s Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences. His research group was able to generate human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells— equivalent to human embryonic stem (ES) cells—from human adult fibroblasts taken from skin cells. This breakthrough was subsequently reportedin the research journal Cell on November 20, 2007. This result not only proved that it was possible—under normal laboratory conditions—to revert adult cells to an embryonic state, but also means that there is now a way of generating ES cells without the ethical issues that surround the use of human ES cells for research. Further, it potentially clears the way for the treatment of patients usingstem cells induced from their own cells, thereby eliminating the risk of transplant rejection. For these reasons, this work has been recognized as an extremely important breakthrough in the field of regenerative medicine. After the publication of these results, the U.S. government quickly announced that it had commenced funding to assist iPS cell research projects, while the Vatican welcomed thisnew development in stem cell research. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the results achieved by the Kyoto University team have taken the world by storm.

nucleus has been removed. In the cell fusion method, an ES cell and somatic cell are fused by treatment with an electric current. In either of these methods, not only is there the problem of bioethical issues relating to the use of...