Stem Cell
[20] Umbilical cord blood's ability to differentiate into all types of blood cell made it importent for treating blood related diseases.
(6)
[16] Frog clonning
[18] Allogenic bone marrow transplantation
[19] Martin Evans
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[17] Doctor James Edgar Till and Ernest McCulloch are the "Fathers of stem cell research" for their discovery of the existence of stem cell and set the stage for stem cell tesearch
[22] Linzhao Cheng
[23] Shoukhrat Mitalipov
[21] Doctor Shinya Yamanak discovered the induced pluripotent stem cell
[12] Alexander Maximov
Stem cell Research Timeline
[24] Takanori Takebi
[25]
1908
Alexander Maksimov is a Russian scientist that was the first to hypothesize the existence of stem cells and he is the first to propose the term, “stem cell”. The idea of the existence of stem cell challenged the traditional belief of that embryo begin with a extremely small infant that expand as it grows rather then embryo begin with a few dozen of cells.
1957-1959
E. Donnall Thomas, the father of bone marrow transplant, developed bone marrow transplant technique called "intravenous infusion" to treat leukemia in 1957.
The intravenous infusion of bone marrow is to first kill off the abnormal blood in the patient with radiation then directly endow healthy blood stem cell from the donor's bone marrow into the bone marrow of the patient to create new healthy blood in the patient.
In 1959, Thomas performed a bone marrow transplantation between an identical twin and the treatment is successful. His method of using bone marrow transplant to treating leukemia is proved to be feasible and it is still widely used today.
The bone marrow transplant changed the medical field tremendously because the bone marrow transplant made many once incurable diseases such as blood related cancer and leukemia to highly treatable.
1962
Sir John Gurdon, often refers to as the father of cloning, discovered that all cell from the same organism have identical DNA in 1960 and in result create cloned adult frogs.
Before his discovery, it was commonly believed that cell's gene is irreversibly changed after it differentiated into a specific cell according the experiment done by renowned scientist King and Briggs in 1952.
Gurdon used the same method as Briggs and King did. This method is called the nuclear transfer and it was done by putting the nuclear of a differentiate cell into an unfertilized egg. Both Gurdon, and Briggs and King use frog for their experiment because of the large egg that frog has which make the experiment possible to operate manually.
While Briggs' and King's experiment showed that differentiate cells have different genetic material, Gurdon's experiment shows a different result.
The astonishing experiment that Gurdon did subverted the widely accepted belief and proved that all cells have the same genetic material. This discovery sets the stage for the discovery of Induced pluripotent stem cell by Dr. Shinya Yamanaka in 2006.
1961
Doctors James Edgar Till and Ernest McCulloch, now known as the “Fathers of stem-cell research”, are the first to prove the existence of stem cell.
Both worked in the Ontario Cancer Institute in Canada, Till collaborated with his colleague McCulloch and discovered a surprising phenomenon in their study of the radiation sensitivity of normal bone marrow cells on the mouse. Their discovery of the spleen colony-forming unit (CFU-S) fits the criteria for stem cell as the CFU-S can renew itself and differentiate on to multiple lineages.
In 1961, they published their pioneer discovery of stem cell on the journal “Radiation Research” and set the stage for stem cell research.
1968
The first successful non-twin allogeneic bone marrow transplant between two siblings was performed to treat Severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID). As siblings receive their DNA from the same parent, there is a higher chance of match. The treatment first accessed the siblings’ immune compatibility by mixing their leukocyte culture then the healthy bone marrow stem cell was drawn from the donor and inject to the recipient. The healthy blood stem cell in the patient's bone marrow will began to create different types of healthy blood cell.
1981
Martin Evans extracted mice embryonic stem cell and demonstrated that embryonic stem cell can differentiate into all cell types that make up the organism.
He and his colleagues were the first to cultured and cultivated mice embryonic stem cell in to lavatory. At the same year, Gail R. Martin introduce the term “embryonic stem cell”
1988
Umbilical cord blood transplant is use to treat Fanconi anemia. The treatment was followed by the use of Umbilical cord blood to treat numerous disorders such as leukemia, cancer and immune deficiencies.
1996
Dolly the sheep, the first cloned complex adult mammal was created.
Dolly the sheep is created by somatic cell nuclear transfer. The somatic cell transfer is to inject the cell from the donor sheep into an unfertilized egg cell that had its nucleus removed so there are no DNA. In result, the cloned sheep will have the exact DNA as the donor sheep.
This is a major step in stem cell field as it shows the possibility and controvery of making pluripotenet stem cells on more complex mammals and it mark the possibility of doing stem cell research on human.
Dolly the sheep was created by Sir Ian Wilmut and Dr. Keith Campbell while working in the Roslin Institute in Scotland.
2006
Induced Pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) were generated by Shinya Yamanaka in 2006.
The iPSCs allows the obtaining of pluripotent stem cells without destroying the embryo by reprogram mature cell into pluripotent cell.
Click the button to learn more about induced pluripotent
stem cell.
2009
Linzhao Cheng and his colleagues genetically altered IPS cells to study blood disease. His experiment allows the better study of diseases and correct disease causing mutation.
2013
Shoukhrat Mitalipov and his colleagues at the Oregon Health and Science University are the first to successfully cloned human embryonic stem cell by adding caffeine to egg before DNA transfer.
2013
A team led by Takanori Takebi present a possible solution to solve the problem of shortage of donor organs for treating end-stage organ failure by using induced pluripotent stem cells to grow tissue in mouse.
2013
The first test tube burger was created from bovine skeleton stem cell extracted from cow muscle tissue and grow in lab.
Creating meat in lab by using stem cell shows the potential for comercializing this stem cell technology in the future.
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