Shots - Health Blog Mon October 8, 2012 Nobel Winners Unlocked
Cells' Unlimited Potential Originally published on Mon October
8, 2012 2:28 pm The two scientists who won this year's Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine discovered that cells in our
body have the remarkable ability to reinvent themselves. They
found that every cell in the human body, from our skin and bones
to our heart and brain, can be coaxed into forming any other
cell. The process is called reprogramming, and its potential for
new drugs and therapies is vast. If neurons or heart cells are
damaged by disease or aging, then cells from the skin or blood
potentially could be induced to reprogram themselves and repair
the damaged tissue. The winners — John Gurdon of the Gurdon
Institute in Cambridge, England, and Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto
University in Japan and the Gladstone Institute in San Francisco
— made their discoveries more than 40 years apart. In 1962,
Gurdon proved that a cell from a frog's stomach contained the
entire blueprint to make