Discover Magazine, a leading science and technology magazine said of Dr. Robert Lanza. “Lanza’s single-minded quest to usher in this new age has paid dividends in scientific insights and groundbreaking discoveries.” Indeed, Dr. Robert Lanza has ushered in a new age, the age of great discoveries considered impossible if not outright foolish not many years in the past. This is because recently, Robert Lanza and his team at Harvard University reported a safe method for generating induced pluripotent (iPS) stem cells. Human iPS cells were created from skin cells by direct delivery of proteins, thus eliminating the harmful risks associated with genetic manipulation. This new method provides a potentially safe and non-controversial source of patient-specific stem cells for translation into the clinic. Stem cell research has been going on for years and its use will bring forth great strides in science and medicine.
Dr. Robert Lanza and his team of scientists also discovered how to generate functional hamangioblasts, which is a population of “ambulance” cells, from hES cells. Testing this on animals, it was found out that these cells quickly repaired vascular damage, cutting the death rate after a heart attack in half and restoring the blood flow to ischemic limbs that might otherwise have to be amputated. This pioneering work is not achieved in just a few days. It takes painstaking research and much thought to pull it through and this just goes to show that Dr Robert Lanza is grateful for the life that the inhabitants of this earth are given and through scientific work would contribute to prolonging and safeguarding it for the benefit of all, not just himself.