Two researchers at Harvard's Stem Cell Institute, David Scadden and Leonard Zon, contributed two compounds in midstage human tests that Fate Therapeutics believes could prove that traditional medicines can work on stem cells.
On Monday, the 2012 prize for medicine or physiology was awarded to John Gurdon from the UK and Shinya Yamanaka from Japan for changing adult cells into stem cells, and on Tuesday the prize for physics was awarded to Serge Haroche of France and David Wineland of the US for their work in querying single light and matter particles.