The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, Japanese Professor Dr. Shinya Yamanaka will be named honorary academician of the Royal National Academy of Medicine of Spain – a corporation chaired by Professor Eduardo Díaz Rubio – in a special session to be held at said academy next Thursday, the 22nd.
In that same solemn session, the Medal of Honor of the Royal Academy of Medicine will be awarded to the prestigious Spanish researcher Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, current director of the Altos Labs Science Institute (San Diego, United States).
The concession of awarding the Juan Carlos Izpisúa medal of honor was adopted by the Royal Academy of Medicine in response to the “scientific, academic and health work”, as well as for his “great and significant support for this Royal Academy” .
Among the latest personalities who have deserved this recognition for their scientific work are the professors Francisco J. Ayala (2016) and Jose Francisco Martinez Mojica (2017).
For his part, Professor Yamanaka will be appointed honorary academician, as stated in the minutes of the Governing Board of the aforementioned academy held on June 14, in recognition of his “relevant scientific merits”.
Shinya Yamanaka was awarded, together with the British Jhon Gurdon, the highest award in Medicine and Physiology for having discovered that mature specialized cells can be reprogrammed to become immature cells capable of developing into any tissue of the body, that is, “by the discovery that adult cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent”.
For his part, Juan Carlos Ispizúa -Hellín, Albacete, 1960- in addition to being the director of the aforementioned North American research center, is an extraordinary professor of developmental biology at the Catholic University of Murcia, has discovered a type of RNA that accumulates in the cell nucleus of people suffering from premature aging or progeria, and that blocking this RNA reverses the symptoms of this disease and prolongs life in mice.
The event will take place on September 22 at 6:00 p.m. at the Royal National Academy of Medicine of Spain.