Noble Prize for Medicine Awarded to UK's Gurdon and Japan's Yamanaka for Stem Cell Research

The Nobel Prize season is underway, several of the prizes will be awarded this week, starting with the prize for physiology medicine later today. The prizes for physics and chemistry will also be announced this week.

There was no clear frontrunner for the medicine prize, speculation hinted at Japan's Shinya Yamanaka and Britain's John Gurdon possibly getting the prize for their work with nuclear reprogramming.

The technique can be used to instruct adult, specialized cells to revert to their stem cell status, making it possible to then turn them into any other type of cell. This method of creating stem cells is a big advancement in the field.

Indeed, the Nobel Prize committee has just announced that the two have been awarded the prize this year "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent."

Via: Noble Prize for Medicine Awarded to UK's Gurdon and Japan's Yamanaka for Stem Cell Research