Regenerative Medicine
The Future of Healing
Timeline: 1953-Present day
1953
Researcher Leroy Stevens found the first pluripotent cells in undifferentiated cells found in mouse cancer tumors.
1963
Ernest McCulloch and James Till at the Ontario Cancer Institute found that stem cells have the capacity for self-renewal and that stem cells can differenciate into more specialized cells through experiments in mice.
1978
Transplantable ematopoietic stem cells are discovered in human cord blood by Dr. Gregor Prindull.
1998
James Thompson and Jeffrey Jones derived the first human embryonic stem cells from early embryos, descovering that the cells were pluripotent.
1997
Dominique Bonnet and John Dick discover that leukemia comes from the same stem cells that differenciate into blood cells. This is one of the first studies concluding that cancer grows out of stem cells gone off course.
2006
Shinya Yamanaka's lab in Kyoto, Japan created the first induced pluripotent stem cells by introducing four genes and transforming an adult stem cell into a pluripotent stem cell.
2011
Paolo Macciarini successfully transplanted the first artificial tranchea, or windpipe designed and built by Alexander Seifalian. The artificial windpipe was made out of a synthetic scaffold and covered in stem cells.
1957
Dr. Kolff and Dr. Akutsu implant the first artificial heart into animals. A dog survives aproximatly 90 minutes.
2012
Sabine Costagliola, a molecular embryologist at the Free University of Brussels, and her team sucessfully make the first hormone producing thyroid using embryonic stem cells in mice. If the results can be duplicated in humans, diseases such as hyperthyroidism can be vanquished forever.
2013
The Stanford School of Medicine converts adipose (fat) cells derived from liposuction into human liver cells in mice and in two to three years, can be tested for clinical trials in hopes of finding a way to replace the need for liver transplants in the near future.
