Shinya Yamanaka

Yamanaka was born in Higashiōsaka, Japan, in 1962. After graduating from Tennōji High School attached to Osaka Kyoiku University, he received his M.D. degree at Kobe University in 1987 and his Ph.D. degree at Osaka City University, Graduate School of Medicine in 1993. After this, he went through a residency in orthopedic surgery at National Osaka Hospital and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular disease, San Francisco.

Afterwards, he worked at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, US, and Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. Yamanaka is currently a professor and the director emeritus of Center for iPS Research and Application (CiRA), Kyoto University. He is also a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes.

Between 1987 and 1989, Yamanaka was a resident in orthopedic surgery at the National Osaka Hospital. Some seniors referred to him as "Jamanaka", a pun on the Japanese word for obstacle.

From 1993 to 1996, he was at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular disease. Between 1996 and 1999, he was an assistant professor at Osaka City University Medical School, but found himself mostly looking after mice in the laboratory, not doing actual research.

When applying for a position at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), he stated that he could and would clarify the characteristics of embryonic stem cells, and this can-do attitude won him the job. From 1999 to 2003, he was an associate professor at the institute, and began the research that would later win him the 2012 Nobel Prize. He became a full professor at NAIST in 2003, remaining until 2005. Between 2004 and 2010, Yamanaka was a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences, Kyoto University. Between 2010 and 2022, he was the director and a professor at the center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), Kyoto University. In April 2022, he stepped down, becoming director emeritus of CiRA, while retaining his professorship.

In 2006, he and his team generated induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) from adult mouse fibroblasts. iPS cells closely resemble embryonic stem cells, the in vitro equivalent of the part of the blastocyst (the embryo a few days after fertilization) which grows to become the embryo proper. They could show that his iPS cells were pluripotent, i.e. capable of generating all cell lineages of the body. Later he and his team generated iPS cells from human adult fibroblasts, again as the first group to do so. A key difference from previous attempts by the field was his team's use of multiple transcription factors, instead of transfecting one transcription factor per experiment. They started with 24 transcription factors known to be important in the early embryo, but could in the end reduce it to four transcription factors – Sox2, Oct4, Klf4 and c-Myc.

20 years later, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in Japan issued conditional marketing authorization in 2026 to two regenerative medical products developed from reprogrammed iPS cells, undertaking the first ever practical application of iPS cell-derived products.

The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Yamanaka and John B. Gurdon and "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent."

The Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA) at Kyoto University responded to allegations of image manipulation in several studies co-authored by Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka. CiRA stated that questioning Yamanaka's integrity without sufficient evidence was “completely unacceptable.”

These are some types of cells that will help in understanding the material.

The prevalent view during the early 20th century was that mature cells were permanently locked into the differentiated state and cannot return to a fully immature, pluripotent stem cell state. It was thought that cellular differentiation can only be a unidirectional process. Therefore, non-differentiated egg/early embryo cells can only develop into specialized cells. However, stem cells with limited potency (adult stem cells) remain in bone marrow, intestine, skin etc. to act as a source of cell replacement.

The fact that differentiated cell types had specific patterns of proteins suggested irreversible epigenetic modifications or genetic alterations to be the cause of unidirectional cell differentiation. So, cells progressively become more restricted in the differentiation potential and eventually lose pluripotency.

In 1962, John B. Gurdon demonstrated that the nucleus from a differentiated frog intestinal epithelial cell can generate a fully functional tadpole via transplantation to an enucleated egg. Gurdon used somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) as a method to understand reprogramming and how cells change in specialization. He concluded that differentiated somatic cell nuclei had the potential to revert to pluripotency. This was a paradigm shift at the time. It showed that a differentiated cell nucleus has retained the capacity to successfully revert to an undifferentiated state, with the potential to restart development (pluripotent capacity).

Whether an intact differentiated cell could be fully reprogrammed to become pluripotent remained unknown.

Shinya Yamanaka found that introduction of a small set of transcription factors into a differentiated cell was sufficient to revert the cell to a pluripotent state. …

In 2007, Yamanaka was recognized as a "Person Who Mattered" in the Time Person of the Year edition of Time magazine. Yamanaka was also nominated as a 2008 Time 100 Finalist. In June 2010, Yamanaka was awarded the Kyoto Prize for reprogramming adult skin cells to pluripotential precursors. Yamanaka developed the method as an alternative to embryonic stem cells, thus circumventing an approach in which embryos would be destroyed.

In May 2010, Yamanaka was given "Doctor of Science honorary degree" by Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

In September 2010, he was awarded the Balzan Prize for his work on biology and stem cells.

Yamanaka has been listed as one of the 15 Asian Scientists To Watch by Asian Scientist magazine on May 15, 2011. In June 2011, he was awarded the inaugural McEwen Award for Innovation; he shared the $100,000 prize with Kazutoshi Takahashi, who was the lead author on the paper describing the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells.

In June 2012, he was awarded the Millennium Technology Prize for his work in stem cells. He shared the 1.2 million euro prize with Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel. In October 2012, he and fellow stem cell researcher John Gurdon were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent."

Yamanaka practiced judo (2nd Dan black belt) and played rugby as a university student. He also has a history of running marathons. After a 20-year gap, he competed in the inaugural Osaka Marathon in 2011 as a charity runner with a time of 4:29:53. He took part in Kyoto Marathon to raise money for iPS research since 2012. His personal best is 3:25:20 at 2018 Beppu-Ōita Marathon.