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Reprogram ordinary skin cells into embryonic-like stem cells

Breakthrough:
Nagy and his team have developed a safer way to reprogram ordinary skin cells into embryonic-like stem cells. This discovery could eventually eliminate the need to use human embryos and provides a road map for new clinical approaches to regenerative medicine.

Inventor:
Dr. Andras Nagy, Canada

Financial reward:
$1,000,000++

The Story:
Reprogram ordinary skin cells into embryonic-like stem cells

His breakthrough builds on 2007 advancements by Japanese and U.S. scientists who were the first to create stem cells from a patient's skin. However, that technique used viruses to insert the four reprogramming genes into the genome of a mature skin cell. The problem is that the viruses could mutate and eventually cause cancer to develop in the tissue grown from iPS cells. Also, because Nagy’s stem cells are taken from the patient's own skin, they pose no threat of immune rejection, mitigating another medical drawback of embryonic stem cell use.

Because previous methods used embryos or women's eggs, Nagy’s discovery using skin cells to grow embryonic-like stem cells may help lay to rest many of the medical and ethical concerns of those who contend that stem-cell use is dangerous or immoral. Even some of the more vocal opponents of stem cell research have had positive things to say about Nagy’s work. “That’s very encouraging,” he says.

Nagy’s work was not conducted in isolation. His paper was published at the same time as a complementary paper by an Edinburgh team of scientists from the Medical Research Council Centre for Regenerative Medicine. “I was in Scotland at a seminar where we met up by chance. I didn’t know about the work they were doing, but discovered that one researcher there – Dr. Keisuke Kaji - had a genius idea.”

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