The 2012 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine has been awarded jointly to Japan's Shinya Yamanaka and John Gurdon of Britain “for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.”
The prize committee at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute said on October 8 that the discovery has “revolutionized our understanding of how cells and organisms develop.”
The breakthrough first suggested that specialized cells could be altered into “immature cells capable of developing into all tissues of the body.”
The medicine prize is the first of six Nobel prizes scheduled to be awarded through October 15.
The prestigious prizes, founded by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, were first awarded in 1901.
This year, the Nobel Foundation lowered the prize money 20 percent to $1.2 million, citing turmoil on financial markets.
All prizes will be handed out December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.
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