![]() ![]() They were biological questions, but they were also deeply philosophical: How could a single cell unfold into a unique individual? Where did the instructions come from? And how much, really, separated humans from other animals?Īfter more training at UCLA - to learn about frogs - Izpisua Belmonte was heading to Europe to start his own lab. ![]() It was there, fiddling with genes and embryonic tissues, that Izpisua Belmonte finally found some questions he could sink his teeth into. Only when he moved to a lab in Heidelberg, Germany, and helped with pioneering work on the genes that rigorously control the body patterns of embryos, did he find a spark. Izpisua Belmonte went on to earn a Ph.D., studying adipose tissue in Bologna, Italy - but fat research frankly bored him. But on his way to enroll in the philosophy department, a beautiful building caught his eye and, on a whim, he enrolled there instead. When he finally re-enrolled in school at 16, he quickly caught up - and caught the notice of teachers who encouraged him to attend the University of Valencia. He was born in rural Spain to a farm family so poor that he had to drop out of elementary school at age 8 and work in the fields. Izpisua Belmonte, now 57, is an unlikely star of this futuristic arena. “Juan Carlos is both rigorous and intrepid enough to take bold risks and then produce science that surprises us all.” Daley, a stem cell researcher and dean of Harvard Medical School. “Scientists have this way of predicting what can’t be done, then being proven wrong by other scientists who are not bound by conventional wisdom,” said Dr. They applaud him for his audacious work, his pushing of boundaries, his keen intellect, and his willingness to conduct difficult experiments everyone tells him will never succeed. Salk Instituteīut among scientists, Izpisua Belmonte has a growing legion of fans. Human cells are shown in green in this developing heart in a 4-week-old chimeric pig embryo. And the work is revolting to people who oppose any dabbling with human embryos or mixing of human and animal tissue. The pig chimera, for example, contained so few human cells that Stanford stem cell researcher Hiromitsu Nakauchi said it seemed “like more a negative result.” Others say the many barriers to creating human organs in pigs seem insurmountable. There are those who remain skeptical about these early findings. Exclusive analysis of biotech, pharma, and the life sciences Learn More ![]()
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