iPS Cell Research & Challenges It Faces

   Shinya Yamanaka, who won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is the 19^th Japanese Nobel laureate. The 18 others are seven in physics, another seven in chemistry, two in literature, one in physiology or medicine and one in peace.

 The seven laureates in physics are Hideki Yukawa, Shinichiro Tomonaga, Reona Esaki, Masatoshi Koshiba, Makoto Kobayashi, Toshihide Masukawa and Yoichiro Nambu. Yukawa, the first Japanese laureate, won the prize in 1949 "for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces". Tomonaga shared the prize with Julian Schwinger and Richard P. Feynman in 1965 "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles". In 1973, Esaki won the prize jointly with Ivar Giaever "for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors". Koshiba won the 2002 prize with Raymond Davis Jr. "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos". The 2008 prize was divided, one half to Nambu "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics" and the other half jointly to Kobayashi and Maskawa "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature".

 The seven chemistry prize winners are Kenichi Fukui, Hideki Shirakawa, Ryoji Noyori, Koichi Tanaka, Osamu Shimomura, Akira Suzuki and Eiichi Negishi. Fukui won the 1981 award jointly with Roald Hoffmann "for their theories, developed independently, concerning the course of chemical reactions". The 2000 prize was jointly awarded to Shirakawa, Alan J. Heeger and Alan G. MacDiarmid "for the discovery and development of conductive polymers". In the following year, Noyori shared the prize with William S. Knowles "for their work on chirally catalysed hydrogenation reactions". The 2002 prize was awarded "for the development of methods for identification and structure analyses of biological macromolecules" with one half jointly to Tanaka and John B. Fenn "for their development of soft desorption ionization methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules" and the other half to Kurt Wüthrich "for his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution". In 2008, Shimomura shared the prize with Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, or GFP". Two years later in 2010, Suzuki and Negishi became joint prize winners with Richard F. Heck "for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis".

 Besides Yamanaka, Susumu Tonegawa won the medicine prize back in 1987 "for his discovery of the genetic principle for generation of antibody diversity".

 The literature prize went in 1968 to Yasunari Kawabata "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind" and in 1994 to Kenzaburo Oe "who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today".

 Eisaku Sato, who served as prime minister from 1964 to 1972, won the peace prize in 1974 for his work in negotiating the Non-Proliferation Treaty and lifelong opposition to nuclear weapons.

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Written by: Yudai Kodera (Prologue/ Hopes For Practical Use of iPS Cells)

                   Kento Isogai (iPS Cells Seen From ELSI Viewpoint)

                   Daisuke Aoki (How Keen Is Japan in Science Promotion?)

                   Ayako Shimatani (iPS Cells & The Catholic Church)

                   Tomomi Kubota (Yamanaka is 19th Japanese Nobel Laureate)

Editted by: Yudai Kodera

⇒ Will an iPS Mouse Dream About Mice?

⇒ Hopes For Practical Use of iPS Cells

⇒ iPS Cells Seen From ELSI Viewpoint

⇒ How Keen Is Japan in Science Promotion?

⇒ iPS Cells & The Catholic Church

⇒ Yamanaka is 19th Japanese Nobel Laureate