Brian Deer: VanDerHorst-Larson: misinformed mother scatters food for the birds

19 Oct

Brian Deer recently lectured at the University of Wisconsin La-Crosse on his journalism involving Andrew Wakefield’s research efforts and the improprieties found in those efforts. Not surprisingly, this led to a response by Mr. Wakefield and his supporters. I’ve pretty much given up on fact checking their complaints. Or, in this case, even really reading them.

But, complaints were made and, in this case, Mr. Deer has responded. His written response as VanDerHorst-Larson: misinformed mother scatters food for the birds.

Mr. Deer introduces his article with these paragraphs:

After the collapse of what was only ever a fringe campaign in the United States, claiming that vaccines were responsible for an epidemic of autism, small groups of ill-informed, misguided and sometimes frankly malicious, people became desperate for attention. This led to a barrage of emails – often abusive or crammed with hate speech – to university staff following my October 2012 lectures in Wisconsin.

The complaint below by one Jennifer VanDerHorst-Larson, who said she was founder of something she called the “Canary Party”, was one of the few that didn’t ooze with personal bile. But even she hadn’t checked her facts.

Ms VanDerHorst-Larson’s complaints are numbered, and I respond beneath each.

An example of such a complaint, with a partial quote of Mr. Deer’s response is given here:

8. Mr. Deer also failed to disclose that there were no complaints against Wakefield by the children’s families, most of whom very strongly support him, and many of whom credit his team with a diagnosis that led to effective treatment of their children’s bowel disease.

The father of the only child in Wakefield’s series who was not entered in (failed) UK compensation litigation described Wakefield’s reporting in the Lancet as “a clear misrepresentation of my son’s history” and “an outright fabrication”.

If you wish to read a point by point response, again, the link is VanDerHorst-Larson: misinformed mother scatters food for the birds.

Washington Joins Indiana and Maryland in Revoking Mark Geier’s License

13 Oct

This from a short article at Harpocrates Speaks: Washington Joins Indiana and Maryland in Revoking Mark Geier’s License.

Details on the Washington actions can be found here an the recent order here.

Three states have revoked Mark Geier’s license to practice medicine. Missouri, Illinois and Hawaii still allow him to practice.

Mark Geier promoted the idea that autism could be treated by stopping the body from producing sex hormones (in specific, testosterone) based on a scientifically implausible argument that mercury bonded to testosterone. He diagnosed children with precocious puberty in order to justify prescriptions of Lupron and similar drugs which shut down sex hormone production.

—
Matt Carey

Emily Willingham writing at Forbes

12 Oct

Emily Willingham is one of the best (if not the best) science writer I know covering issues including autism. Her work covers a more broad area than just autism, but it is her autism work I’ve read most closely. She does a great job of taking the hype out of the media versions of recent research and explaining what the research really says.

Forbes has shown itself wise enough to add her to their crew.

Her bio reads:

I am a science writer and editor and former biology professor with work published at Slate, Scientific American blogs, The Scientist, and others. I focus on how science filters to consumers and how consumers make decisions about science. Frequent honorable mentions: autism, parenting, and the news media.

With her first article she jumped right in with ADHD, Fish And Mercury Exposure During Pregnancy — What’s The Connection? .

The artice doesn’t mention vaccines. But with an article on mercury, guess where the focus is for the comments.

She has a good article on the DSM-5 up as well: New DSM-5 Criteria For Autism — Who Will Be Left Behind?
—
By Matt Carey

Immunization uptake in younger siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder

12 Oct

If one child has autism, the chance that a younger sibling will have autism is about 18.7%. (see the study Recurrence Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Baby Siblings Research Consortium Study and discussions here and elsewhere). Anecdotally, we hear a lot about families deciding to forgo or delay vaccines after having an autistic child. This raises a question and an opportunity for research: does delaying or stopping vaccines result in a lower risk of autism? Looking at younger siblings, one would have a population that both has a higher autism risk and a possibly higher percentage of use of alternate (including no) vaccine schedule.

A study has been published this week on this very topic: Immunization uptake in younger siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder. The answer? Immunization does not increase the risk of autism. But I get ahead of myself.

The authors divided the children into three groups

Immunization status was divided into three predefined categories: (a) Fully immunized: Children with four doses of DPTP (2, 4, 6, and 18 months) and the initial MMR dose at 12 months, (b) Partial/delayed immunizations: Children with any missing dose of DPTP or MMR at any age or a delay of 3 months or more for at least one of the doses of DPTP or MMR, and (c) Not immunized/declined: Children for whom all immunizations had been withheld as of 3 years of age.

In case you are wondering, yes, comparing groups (a) and (c) is a vaccinated/unvaccinated study design. [edit to add–see note below] (b) just gives more dimension to the study.

Yes, siblings of autistic children are vaccinated differently (on average) than younger siblings of non-autistic children:

MMR immunization uptake. The analysis revealed a significant group difference in MMR immunization status (Fisher’s exact test = 80.82, p < .001). Bearing in mind that the Public Health Agency of Canada recommends that children receive their initial MMR vaccine at 12 months (in contrast to the United States, where it is recommended at 12–15 months; Public Health Agency of Canada, 2006a; CDC, 2011), only 42 of the 98 (43%) younger sibs received the 12-month MMR vaccine ontime (i.e. by at least 15 months of age; see Figure 2); an additional 38 (39%) received the vaccine after 15 months of age, and 18 (18%) had not been immunized against MMR by the age of 3 years. In contrast, 88 of 98 (90%) probands received the MMR by 15 months, 9 (9.2%) were delayed, and only 1 had not been immunized by the age of 3 years. Similarly, 63 of 65 (97%) controls had completed their MMR immunization on time (i.e. only two were delayed, and none had parents who had fully declined).

Only 42% of younger siblings of autistics received the MMR ontime. 18% were not given the vaccine by age 3. Compare this to the control group, where 90% received the MMR by 15 months and 98% by age 3.

Differences were seen with the DPTP vaccine as well:

DPTP immunization uptake. A significant group difference was also found for DPTP immunization status (Fisher’s exact test = 38.95, p < .001), with just over half (55.1%) of the younger sibs having been immunized on time (31.6% were delayed, and 13.3% were not immunized by the age of 3 years; see Figure 3). The rates of DPTP uptake were higher for probands (86.7% immunized on time, 12.2% delayed, and 1% not immunized) and controls (90.8% immunized on time, 9.2% delayed, and none declined).

What did this do to autism risk for these un- and under-vaccinated younger siblings? Statistically nothing:

Of the 39 younger sibs who had completed their immunizations on time, 6 (15.7%) were diagnosed with ASD and 2 with speech-language delay (SLD). Of the 47 younger sibs for whom immunization as delayed, 15 (31.2%) received an ASD diagnosis and 2 had SLD. Of the 12 younger sibs who had not received any immunizations, 4 (33.3%) were diagnosed with ASD and 1 with SLD. Note that of those children who did not receive a diagnosis, 43.8% were fully immunized. The Fisher’s exact tests revealed no significant difference in the rates of diagnoses between immunized and nonimmunized groups for MMR (Fisher’s exact test = 5.46, p = .22), DPTP (Fisher’s exact test = 3.65, p = .44), or both (Fisher’s exact test = 4.13, p = .37), although small sample size renders these comparisons exploratory only.

And, by “statistically nothing”, I am not saying, “the calculated risk for vaccinated siblings are higher, but we can’t claim they are because the p values aren’t statistically significant”. No, I’m saying, “the calculated values are lower for vaccinated siblings.”

The authors found about 15.7% autism risk for baby siblings. Very close to the Baby Siblings study mentioned above which found 18.7% risk. The risk found for siblings with delayed vaccination was 31.2% and for unvaccinated was 33.3%. Again, these values are not statistically significant from the 15.7%.

So, when one does a vaccinated/unvaccinated study, one finds that autism risk (for familial autism) is not increased.

Since people will undoubtedly be looking for the conflicts of interests for the study authors, the COI statement is “The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.” and their funding is “This research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Autism Speaks.”

Limitations include sample size and the fact that the authors relied upon parent recall for much of the data:

Parents of 22.2% (58/261) of the children provided a copy of their child’s immunization record or had it sent by their doctor; for the remaining 77.8%, status report was based on parent recall (note that this information was typically gathered at each visit, at 3- to 6-month intervals, to avoid recall bias). Due to the potential for recall bias (e.g. see Dorell et al., 2011, for bias in recall for the older children), we examined the influence of information source (card copy vs parent recall) on immunization status. No significant relationship was found for MMR (Fisher’s exact test = .38, p = .84), DPTP (Fisher’s exact test =1.71, p = .44), or “both” (Fisher’s exact test = 1.58, p = .48).

Here is the abstract:

Background: Parental concerns persist that immunization increases the risk of autism spectrum disorder, resulting in the potential for reduced uptake by parents of younger siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (“younger sibs”).

Objective: To compare immunization uptake by parents for their younger child relative to their
older child with autism spectrum disorder (“proband”) and controls.

Design: Immunization status was obtained for 98 “younger sibs,” 98 “probands,” and 65 controls.

Results: A significant group difference emerged for overall immunization status (Fisher’s exact test = 62.70, p < .001). One or more immunizations in 59/98 younger sibs were delayed (47/98; 48%) or declined (12/98; 12.2%); immunizations were delayed in 16/98 probands (16.3%) and declined in only one. All controls were fully immunized, with only 6 (9.2%) delayed. Within the “younger sibs” group, 25/98 received an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis; 7 of whom (28%) were fully immunized. The rates of autism spectrum disorder diagnosis did not differ between immunized and nonimmunized younger sib groups, although small sample size limits interpretability of this result.

Conclusion: Parents who already have one child with autism spectrum disorder may delay or
decline immunization for their younger children, potentially placing them at increased risk of
preventable infectious diseases.

Edit to add: The authors have clarified that unvaccinated means not vaccinated with MMR or DPTP, not necessarily completely unvaccinated.

Autism Science Foundation Partnering with UJA-Federation to Launch Three Surveys Designed to Identify Services and Needs for Adults with Autism

11 Oct

As a follow on to the article Survey of Services Needs for Adults with Autism, here is the press release:

 

Date Published:
OCTOBER 11, 2012

The New Surveys — Conducted on behalf of UJA-Federation by the Autism Science Foundation and the Interactive Autism Network — Aim to Help Service Providers Expand Programs That Support AllThose Affected by Autism

(OCTOBER 11, 2012—New York, NY) UJA-Federation of New York announced today the launch of a series of surveys designed to determine which types of services for adults with autism are most needed in the New York metropolitan area. The surveys are being administered by the Autism Science Foundation and the Interactive Autism Network (IAN).

The three surveys target individuals with autism ages 18 to 35; parents of individuals with autism ages 18 to 35 who are independent; and parents of individuals with autism ages 18 to 35 who are under their parents’ guardianship. People fitting one of these three groups are invited to participate by registering at the Interactive Autism Network (IAN) and completing the “UJA-Federation Adult with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Survey.”

“The goal of this project is to identify the drivers of fulfillment and success for autistic adults in the areas of employment, leisure activities, and spirituality,” said Deborah Hilibrand, a member of UJA-Federation of New York’s Autism Task Force. “We will then use this information to help UJA-Federation and other agencies provide these critical activities by providing financial support for projects that deliver these services.”

“We also want to use the data to enhance public awareness about the critical issues facing adults with autism and their families by broadly disseminating the results of this survey,” said Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation.

The free survey is designed to be completed entirely online. Surveys must be completed by Friday, November 30, 2012. All responses and data collected will be kept anonymous and confidential. Participants in this survey do not have to be Jewish or receive services from UJA-Federation, and people of all faiths are welcome.

Eligibility to participate in the UJA-Federation Adult with ASD Survey includes:

  • Residency in the five boroughs of New York City, Long Island, or Westchester.
  • An adult with ASD who is independent and is not under anyone’s legal guardianship.
  • The parent of an independent adult with ASD (for example, one’s adult son or daughter with ASD is not under legal guardianship and maintains the right to make their own medical and legal decisions).
  • The legally authorized representative of a dependent adult with ASD (for example, you may have legal guardianship or medical power of attorney for the adult with ASD).

“This project is especially exciting because the information collected will not only have an immediate effect on improving services for adults with autism, but it will also advance autism research involving adults — a group that is sorely underrepresented,” said Dr. Paul Law, director of the Interactive Autism Network at Kennedy Krieger Institute. “I believe that community service providers like UJA-Federation of New York are key to ensuring greater involvement of adults with autism in research.”

Additional funding for this project was provided by the Hilibrand Foundation and the FAR Fund. The survey can be found by visiting http://orca.kennedykrieger.org/index.php?sid=86954&newtest=Y&lang=en

###

Contact: Roberta Lee, UJA-Federation, 1.212.836.1800, leer@ujafedny.org

 

To begin registration and the survey, click on the link below:

http://orca.kennedykrieger.org/index.php?sid=86954&newtest=Y&lang=en

—
By Matt Carey

Survey of Services Needs for Adults with Autism

11 Oct

There is a great need for more and more accurate information on the needs of autistic adults. Information will allow for better advocacy and changes.

The Autism Science Foundation and the UJA Federation of New York have teamed up with the Interactive Autism Network (IAN) to gather data in a survey.

Now is the chance to be heard. Autistic adults, parents of autistic adults and representatives of autistic adults are encouraged to participate. Details are below in a message from Alison Singer at the Autism Science Foundation.

Now is the chance to be heard.

We need your help!

As many of you know, there is little information about the changing needs of adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) to guide those planning programs and services. That is why the UJA Federation of New York and the Autism Science Foundation are asking adults with ASD (and their parents or guardians) to complete a survey addressing what is going well in daily life, and what is a challenge. The results of this survey will inform decision making with regard to which programs should be expanded and which may no longer be of value.

We invite you to take this survey by joining the Interactive Autism Network (IAN) – the world’s largest online autism research project — and then completing the UJA Adult with ASD Survey. As a member of IAN, you’ll be informed about future surveys and studies, with a chance to provide ongoing input regarding the experience of adults with ASD over time. IAN registration and this survey can be completed entirely online and will take approximately 20 minutes.

You are eligible to participate in IAN and the UJA Adult with ASD Survey if you are:

· An adult with ASD who is independent
(that is, you are not under anyone’s legal guardianship)

· The parent of an independent adult with ASD
(that is, your adult son or daughter with ASD is not under legal guardianship and maintains the right to make their own medical and legal decisions)

· The legally authorized representative of a dependent adult with ASD
(For example, you may have legal guardianship or medical power of attorney for the adult with ASD)

If you’d like to read the IAN Research study consent form, including privacy policies, before continuing, click here.

To begin registration and the survey, click on the link below:
http://bit.ly/ORf7d5

If you have any questions, the IAN team is happy to answer them for you. You can contact them at 1-866-348-3440 or ian@kennedykrieger.org.

Your participation is critical, and will inform those planning programs about which resources and services adults with ASD and their families need most. Thank you in advance for your support and please forward this email to any individuals or groups who may be interested in participating.

Sincerely,

Alison Singer
President, Autism Science Foundation

The press release can be found on the Autism Science Foundation’s website.

—
By Matt Carey

A breach of privacy

10 Oct

Privacy is an important point for all of us. I blogged for a long time under a pseudonym in order to protect my child’s privacy. The subject is important enough to me that when I noticed what I considered to be a breach of privacy by Andrew Wakefield and his “Dr Wakefield Justice Fund”, I wrote to them with the information in order to give them the chance to correct this. To explain: the “Dr. Wakefield Justice Fund” posted documents from Mr. Wakefield’s defamation suit filed against Brian Deer and Fiona Godlee. One of those documents includes the full names and birthdates of seven of the patients seen at the Royal Free Hospital in the 1990’s.

I sent the following email to one of the contact email addresses for the “Dr Wakefield Justice Fund” (info@drwakefieldjusticefund.org).

Hello,

if you aren’t already aware of this, you may want to know that in this document:

[link redacted by me for this article]

You have made public the full names and birth dates of seven patients seen at the Royal Free. Given the complaints levied against Mr. Deer for, as I recall, publishing the first names of the Lancet 12, I thought you might want to take the effort to redact that document.

Matt Carey

I sent this Friday of last week and so far have received no response and no correction has been made. I have not made an effort to find and remember the names of the “Lancet 12” so these names are unfamiliar to me (with the exception of two last names). I did a quick internet search on some of the names and did not find them linked to Mr. Wakefield or MMR in a relatively brief search, so this seems like a true breach of privacy. I’ll note that in the GMC hearings names were occasionally spoken but the court kept to a standard of anonymizing child and parent names in the transcript.

I would encourage the “Dr. Wakefield Justice Fund” to redact that and any other documents which contain such information.

—
By Matt Carey

Occurrence and Family Impact of Elopement in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

9 Oct

In the past few years there has been a great deal of discussion on wandering and autism. Wandering as in elopement, running away, leaving a home or group. With people who are not independent this can obviously be a dangerous situation.

The U.S. Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) had much discussion on wandering. The previous IACC had a Subcommittee on Safety and provided HHS Secretary Sebelius with a letter on the subject. One hot topic was whether a medical code should be created to track wandering as there was little hard data on the topic.

One result of this discussion was a study to answer: how prevalent is wandering? Anecdotally we knew the answer was going to be that there is a high prevalence. Now there are numbers to back that up from a study published in the journal Pediatrics.

Here is the abstract:

OBJECTIVES: Anecdotal reports suggest that elopement behavior in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) increases risk of injury or death and places a major burden on families. This study assessed parent-reported elopement occurrence and associated factors among children with ASDs.

METHODS: Information on elopement frequency, associated characteristics, and consequences was collected via an online questionnaire. The study sample included 1218 children with ASD and 1076 of their siblings without ASD. The association among family sociodemographic and child clinical characteristics and time to first elopement was estimated by using a Cox proportional hazards model.

RESULTS: Forty-nine percent (n = 598) of survey respondents reported their child with an ASD had attempted to elope at least once after age 4 years; 26% (n = 316) were missing long enough to cause concern. Of those who went missing, 24% were in danger of drowning and 65% were in danger of traffic injury. Elopement risk was associated with autism severity, increasing, on average, 9% for every 10-point increase in Social Responsiveness Scale T score (relative risk 1.09, 95% confidence interval: 1.02, 1.16). Unaffected siblings had significantly lower rates of elopement across all ages compared with children with ASD.

CONCLUSIONS: Nearly half of children with ASD were reported to engage in elopement behavior, with a substantial number at risk for bodily harm. These results highlight the urgent need to develop interventions to reduce the risk of elopement, to support families coping with this issue, and to train child care professionals, educators, and first responders who are often involved when elopements occur.

Usually with papers like this I try to obtain a copy in advance to review when it is released. last week and this week are too busy for that. The Autism Science Foundation blog has a discussion of the paper in New Study Confirms Autistic Wandering is Widespread. Autism Science Foundation president Alison Singer was one of the forces behind getting this study accomplished, along with Lyn Redwood of SafeMinds and there was support from the National Autism Association and Autism Speaks.

Often on such high profile papers, the full paper is made available to the public. Apparently not in this case.

—
By Matt Carey

TPGA’s Position on Autism Organizations That Support Autistic People

9 Oct

The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism has published a five point list of principles they feel organizations that support autistic people must adhere to. This can be found on their site as “TPGA’s Position on Autism Organizations That Support Autistic People“.

I was going to copy them here, but that is basically the full article. I encourage readers to take the time to check out this list and follow the discussion at TPGA.

—
By Matt Carey

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012: for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent

9 Oct

The Nobel committee announced today that “The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka “for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent”.” The discoveries are discussed below. The short version is that Gordon and Yamanaka separately discovered that specialized cells can be changed into unspecialized cells.

Yamanaka was able to take mature cells and turn them into stem cells. This has opened up a large area of research including research in Autism.

Here is the press release:

The Nobel Prize recognizes two scientists who discovered that mature, specialised cells can be reprogrammed to become immature cells capable of developing into all tissues of the body. Their findings have revolutionised our understanding of how cells and organisms develop.

John B. Gurdon discovered in 1962 that the specialisation of cells is reversible. In a classic experiment, he replaced the immature cell nucleus in an egg cell of a frog with the nucleus from a mature intestinal cell. This modified egg cell developed into a normal tadpole. The DNA of the mature cell still had all the information needed to develop all cells in the frog.

Shinya Yamanaka discovered more than 40 years later, in 2006, how intact mature cells in mice could be reprogrammed to become immature stem cells. Surprisingly, by introducing only a few genes, he could reprogram mature cells to become pluripotent stem cells, i.e. immature cells that are able to develop into all types of cells in the body.

These groundbreaking discoveries have completely changed our view of the development and cellular specialisation. We now understand that the mature cell does not have to be confined forever to its specialised state. Textbooks have been rewritten and new research fields have been established. By reprogramming human cells, scientists have created new opportunities to study diseases and develop methods for diagnosis and therapy.

Life – a journey towards increasing specialisation
All of us developed from fertilized egg cells. During the first days after conception, the embryo consists of immature cells, each of which is capable of developing into all the cell types that form the adult organism. Such cells are called pluripotent stem cells. With further development of the embryo, these cells give rise to nerve cells, muscle cells, liver cells and all other cell types – each of them specialised to carry out a specific task in the adult body. This journey from immature to specialised cell was previously considered to be unidirectional. It was thought that the cell changes in such a way during maturation that it would no longer be possible for it to return to an immature, pluripotent stage.

Frogs jump backwards in development
John B. Gurdon challenged the dogma that the specialised cell is irreversibly committed to its fate. He hypothesised that its genome might still contain all the information needed to drive its development into all the different cell types of an organism. In 1962, he tested this hypothesis by replacing the cell nucleus of a frog’s egg cell with a nucleus from a mature, specialised cell derived from the intestine of a tadpole. The egg developed into a fully functional, cloned tadpole and subsequent repeats of the experiment yielded adult frogs. The nucleus of the mature cell had not lost its capacity to drive development to a fully functional organism.

Gurdon’s landmark discovery was initially met with scepticism but became accepted when it had been confirmed by other scientists. It initiated intense research and the technique was further developed, leading eventually to the cloning of mammals. Gurdon’s research taught us that the nucleus of a mature, specialized cell can be returned to an immature, pluripotent state. But his experiment involved the removal of cell nuclei with pipettes followed by their introduction into other cells. Would it ever be possible to turn an intact cell back into a pluripotent stem cell?

A roundtrip journey – mature cells return to a stem cell state
Shinya Yamanaka was able to answer this question in a scientific breakthrough more than 40 years after Gurdon´s discovery. His research concerned embryonal stem cells, i.e. pluripotent stem cells that are isolated from the embryo and cultured in the laboratory. Such stem cells were initially isolated from mice by Martin Evans (Nobel Prize 2007) and Yamanaka tried to find the genes that kept them immature. When several of these genes had been identified, he tested whether any of them could reprogram mature cells to become pluripotent stem cells.

Yamanaka and his co-workers introduced these genes, in different combinations, into mature cells from connective tissue, fibroblasts, and examined the results under the microscope. They finally found a combination that worked, and the recipe was surprisingly simple. By introducing four genes together, they could reprogram their fibroblasts into immature stem cells!

The resulting induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) could develop into mature cell types such as fibroblasts, nerve cells and gut cells. The discovery that intact, mature cells could be reprogrammed into pluripotent stem cells was published in 2006 and was immediately considered a major breakthrough.

From surprising discovery to medical use
The discoveries of Gurdon and Yamanaka have shown that specialised cells can turn back the developmental clock under certain circumstances. Although their genome undergoes modifications during development, these modifications are not irreversible. We have obtained a new view of the development of cells and organisms.

Research during recent years has shown that iPS cells can give rise to all the different cell types of the body. These discoveries have also provided new tools for scientists around the world and led to remarkable progress in many areas of medicine. iPS cells can also be prepared from human cells.

For instance, skin cells can be obtained from patients with various diseases, reprogrammed, and examined in the laboratory to determine how they differ from cells of healthy individuals. Such cells constitute invaluable tools for understanding disease mechanisms and so provide new opportunities to develop medical therapies.

Sir John B. Gurdon was born in 1933 in Dippenhall, UK. He received his Doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1960 and was a postdoctoral fellow at California Institute of Technology. He joined Cambridge University, UK, in 1972 and has served as Professor of Cell Biology and Master of Magdalene College. Gurdon is currently at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge.

Shinya Yamanaka was born in Osaka, Japan in 1962. He obtained his MD in 1987 at Kobe University and trained as an orthopaedic surgeon before switching to basic research. Yamanaka received his PhD at Osaka City University in 1993, after which he worked at the Gladstone Institute in San Francisco and Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. Yamanaka is currently Professor at Kyoto University and also affiliated with the Gladstone Institute.

Key publications:
Gurdon, J.B. (1962). The developmental capacity of nuclei taken from intestinal epithelium cells of feeding tadpoles. Journal of Embryology and Experimental Morphology 10:622-640.

Takahashi, K., Yamanaka, S. (2006). Induction of pluripotent stem cells from mouse embryonic and adult fibroblast cultures by defined factors. Cell 126:663-676.

KQED in San Francisco has a good story and interview on the award in SF Scientist Wins Nobel for Stem Cell Breakthrough. Here’s the beginning of that story:

Shinya Yamanaka, a stem cell researcher at the Gladstone Institutes, which is affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco, has won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with English researcher John B. Gurdon.

Here is the video from that story (I can’t get the video from the Nobel site to embed):

One great example of the application of this work is in autism research. A topic of much discussion recently was the work of Ricardo Dolmetsch (who, to be clear, did not share this award) of Stanford who has been taking mature skin cells from autistics, reverted them to pluripotent stem cells and, from these, grown cells of other organs like the brain or the heart. By studying these cells, they are learning about the differences in brains of autistics.

—
By Matt Carey

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