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Shinya Yamanaka

Shinya Yamanaka

Nobel Laureate; Founder of iPS cell technology

Appears in 4 stories

Notable Quotes

When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters. I thought, we can't keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.

Stories

Stem cell therapies advance toward treating Parkinson's disease

New Capabilities

Senior Investigator, Gladstone Institutes

For more than 50 years, Parkinson's disease treatment has meant managing symptoms with medication—not addressing the root cause: the death of dopamine-producing brain cells. Now, clinical trials are testing whether stem cell therapies can actually replace those lost neurons.

Updated 2 days ago

The race to repair broken hearts

New Capabilities

Pioneered induced pluripotent stem cell technology in 2006

Researchers just demonstrated they can regenerate heart muscle using reprogrammed stem cells—and for the first time, proved these patches work in a human patient. In January 2025, a 46-year-old woman with advanced heart failure received 10 patches containing 400 million stem cell-derived heart muscle cells. Three months later, when she received a transplant, examination of her original heart revealed the patches had survived, formed blood vessels, and integrated with her heart tissue.

Updated May 21

Lab-grown brain tissue cracks the psychiatric diagnosis problem

New Capabilities

Developed induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology

Johns Hopkins engineers grew miniature brains from patients' skin cells and discovered each psychiatric disorder has its own electrical fingerprint. The organoids diagnosed schizophrenia and bipolar disorder with 83% accuracy just by monitoring neural firing patterns—rising to 92% after gentle electrical stimulation.

Updated May 16

First human trial of cellular rejuvenation therapy begins after two decades of research

New Capabilities

Director Emeritus, Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), Kyoto University; Senior Investigator, Gladstone Institutes

In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka showed that four genes could rewind an adult cell all the way back to an embryonic-like state. Twenty years later, a stripped-down version of that technique is being injected into human eyes for the first time. Life Biosciences, a Boston biotech co-founded by Harvard aging researcher David Sinclair, has begun dosing glaucoma patients with ER-100, a gene therapy that delivers three of Yamanaka's four reprogramming factors to retinal cells — with a built-in off switch controlled by the common antibiotic doxycycline.

Updated Apr 9