The 2023 Ogawa-Yamanaka Stem Cell Prize Awarded to Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz

About Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz

A developmental and stem cell biologist, Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, PhD, is a professor of mammalian development and stem cell biology at the University of Cambridge, as well as the Bren Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology.

Zernicka-Goetz carried out her PhD studies in mammalian development at the University of Warsaw and the University of Oxford, and her postdoctoral studies in stem cell biology at the University of Cambridge. She was awarded senior research fellowships from the Lister Institute, Sidney Sussex College, and the Wellcome Trust for establishing her group at the University of Cambridge, where she became tenured professor in 2010. In 2019, she established her group at Caltech as the Bren Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering.

In her early work, Zernicka-Goetz developed ways of tracking and modulating cell fate in the living embryo. She found that when abnormal cells arise in the embryo, they are eliminated through programmed cell death immediately before and during implantation and only in the part of the embryo that creates a new organism.

With her team, she established the first methods for culturing and studying human embryos beyond implantation in vitro, until day 14, and continues to use this approach in her current research to uncover mechanisms behind human development and the defects that result from specific aneuploidies. Building upon her knowledge of natural development, she pioneered methods through which multiple stem cell types are directed to assemble into complete embryo models, providing unprecedented opportunities for dissecting the genetic and physical parameters governing organogenesis.

Zernicka-Goetz’s lab has given rise to many scientific leaders throughout the world. She is active in promoting equality through her work with scientific academies and non-profit charities. She has two children and the interplay of her personal and scientific journey is described in her biography, The Dance of Life: The New Science of How a Single Cell Becomes a Human Being.

About the Ogawa-Yamanaka Stem Cell Prize

The Ogawa-Yamanaka Stem Cell Prize recognizes individuals whose original translational research has advanced cellular reprogramming technology for regenerative medicine. Supported by Gladstone Institutes, in partnership with Cell Press, the prize was established in 2015 through a generous gift from Betty and Hiro Ogawa. It has been maintained through their sons, Andrew and Marcus Ogawa, to honor the Ogawas’ memory by continuing the philanthropic legacy they shared during their 46-year marriage. It also recognizes the importance of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), discovered by Gladstone Senior Investigator and Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD.

Past recipients include Masayo Takahashi, MD, PhD, in 2015; Douglas Melton, PhD, in 2016; Lorenz Studer, MD, in 2017; Marius Wernig, MD, PhD, in 2018; Gordon Keller, PhD, in 2019; and Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, PhD, in 2022.

The 2023 selection committee was composed of George Daley, MD, PhD, dean of Harvard Medical School; Hideyuki Okano, MD, PhD, dean of the School of Medicine at Keio University; Deepak Srivastava, MD, president of Gladstone Institutes and director of the Roddenberry Stem Cell Center at Gladstone; Lorenz Studer, MD, director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Fiona Watt, FRS, FMedSci, director of the Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at King’s College, London; and Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, senior investigator at Gladstone and professor in the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application at Kyoto University.