ÖAW: Elly Tanaka receives the Leopoldina's Schleiden Medal
The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina honors Elly Tanaka, IMBA's Scientific Director, with the Schleiden Medal for her groundbreaking insights in the field of regenerative biology.
Elly Tanaka, scientific director at IMBA, studies the regeneration of complex body structures, using salamanders as a model. In her main research model, the axolotl, she has identified the cells and mechanisms that enable these animals to regenerate their limbs and several other organs, including the spinal cord and brain.
Key milestones in Tanaka’s research include developing methods to generate transgenic salamanders and identifying the essential molecular mechanisms required for the complete regeneration of axolotl limbs. However, Tanaka’s work is not limited to salamanders. Building on her findings about the axolotl, Tanaka and her lab investigate why mammals have lost their regenerative abilities over the course of evolution. She has demonstrated that fibroblasts, which contribute to scar formation in mammals, are instead converted into stem cells in the axolotl after an injury, allowing for the axolotl’s limb to regenerate.
Tanaka’s research also builds the foundation for developing new strategies for regenerating or replacing mammalian tissue. These insights hold potential for human medicine: Tanaka and her team have, for example, succeeded in inducing human embryonic stem cells to form retinal tissue, including the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), the pigmented layer of the retina. Tanaka and her team use these cells to search for potential drugs to repair defects in RPE cells, which are known to lead to progressive blindness. In other projects, Tanaka and her team investigate the regeneration of the axolotl heart after injury as well as the wiring of new neural circuits.