Nobel Prize expected to go to Japanese stem-cell pioneer

Associated Press

STOCKHOLM

A Japanese researcher who discovered how to make stem cells from ordinary skin cells and avoid the ethical quandaries of making them from human eggs could be a candidate for the medicine award when the 2010 Nobel Prize announcements kick off Monday, experts said.

Several prominent Nobel guessers have pointed to Kyoto University Professor Shinya Yamanaka as a potential winner of the coveted award.

Yamanaka in 2007 discovered how to tinker with human skin cells so they behave like embryonic stem cells, which can morph into things such as heart and nerve cells, as well as lead to new therapies for incurable diseases.

The medicine award is the first of the six prizes to be announced today, followed by physics on Tuesday, chemistry Wednesday, literature on Thursday, the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and economics next Monday.

After the unusual ruckus caused by honoring Barack Obama with the peace prize less than nine months into his presidency, Nobel experts believe the peace-prize committee in Oslo will opt for a more low-profile choice this year.

Both Swedish Radio and science writer Karin Bojs of newspaper Dagens Nyheter had Yamanaka among their top picks for this year’s award.

The Japanese scientist received the Lasker Award in 2009 for his discovery, which has been embraced by scientists around the world because it doesn’t entail getting stem cells from embryos.

Many winners of the Lasker Award — often dubbed “America’s Nobel” — go on to win Nobel Prizes.

Yamanaka could share the award with Canadian stem-cell researchers Ernest McCulloch and James Till, for their early-1970s identification of stem cells, or with British cloning pioneer John Gurdon.

In its annual predictions, the scientific division of Thomson Reuters also put forward American scientists Douglas Coleman and Jeffrey Friedman as candidates for their discovery of a hormone regulating appetite, which has led to breakthroughs in research on obesity.

Other possibilities are American scientist Ralph Steinman for his discovery of cells that regulate immune responses and the American-French trio Ronald Evans, Elwood Jensen and Pierre Chambon for their research on nuclear hormone receptors.