2023-08-22 09:46:17
by Elena Meli
Nobel Shinya Yamanaka, “father” of induced pluripotent stem cells, spoke about the future applications of regenerative medicine on the occasion of the TaoBuk Festival SeeSicily 2023
«I became a scientist because my father had a serious illness, I wanted to give him back some of the life he was no longer able to live, I wanted to help others like him feel better. And today I hope to be able to offer induced pluripotent stem cell therapies to those in need, before seeing dad again”. This is how the Japanese Nobel Shinya Yamanaka, Nobel for medicine in 2012, told his story at the TaoBuk SeeSicily Festival 2023 where he collected the TaoBuk Da Vinci Award 2023.
Stamina cells
Yamanaka retraced his career and the discovery that earned him the Nobel Prize, induced pluripotent stem cells: these are differentiated and mature cells that can be extracted from human tissues, brought back to the condition of stem cells (capable of proliferating and becoming many different types of specialized cells, from neurons to muscle cells) and made to expand in the laboratory, then made to differentiate into the type of cells from time to time useful for treating certain pathologies. Driven by the studies of Yamanaka, who in 2006 generated these cells in mice and in 2007 succeeded starting from human cells, in 2010 the University of Kyoto inaugurated a research center with the aim of promoting the clinical applications of induced pluripotent stem cells. «The first transplant in a man dates back to 2014, when we used nerve stem cells in patients with age-related maculopathy, a disease of the retina that compromises central vision.
The results of that first clinical trial were really good: no rejection, vision stabilized», says Yamanaka. «The ideal is to use stem cells extracted from the patient himself, but the procedure is very expensive and time-consuming; for this reason we therefore decided to take the cells from healthy donors and, thanks to a collaboration with the Japanese Red Cross, in 2015 we began to distribute them and use them in clinical studies”.
Possible applications
“Today these cells are widely used and there are numerous clinical trials underway in the field of regenerative medicine,” continues the scientist. “For example, cells differentiated into neurons are being studied for the therapy of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and spinal trauma, corneal cells for eye diseases, cardiac muscle cells for those who have suffered a heart attack”. Not only that: the other application already widely covered by researchers is the use of induced pluripotent stem cells to find new drugs thanks to a better understanding of disease mechanisms. “For example, we are studying stem cells differentiated into neurons extracted from patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to compare them with cells obtained from healthy people, so as to identify possible drugs that ‘heal’ the neurons and can then be studied in patients,” concludes Yamanaka.
August 22, 2023 (change August 22, 2023 | 09:45)
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