Nicole Marthe Le Douarin

A biologist who invented a new technology to produce quail-chick chimeras from chickens and quails. Thereby, the development of the nervous and immune systems in higher animals was illuminated. She has made significant contributions to the establishment of the method known as “Embryo Manipulation.”

＊This field then was Field of Biotechnologies (Molecular Genetics, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Cancer Research, Application of Biological Function, etc.).

The process of animal development, which involves dramatic changes starting from the simple form of an egg and growing to an elaborate organization, has attracted the attention of biologists for many years. The total understanding of this process, however, has been insurmountably difficult and constitutes one of the most important themes for biology today. One of the difficulties is to find out the very basic facts about how each cell, the basic unit of an organism, behaves in the process of development.

Prof. Le Douarin invented a new technology to produce quail-chick chimaeras from chicken and quail embryos, and devised the quail-chick cell marker system. She was thus successful in elucidating very clearly the migration of various cells from the primordium along specific routes and the course of their development into adult organs mainly in the nervous and immune systems. She established the basis for illuminating at full scale the development of the nervous and immune systems in higher vertebrates, which had not been clearly studied before her introduction of such new technology.

With the success of this new research method Prof. Le Douarin has established a new approach to the study of development at the cellular level, and she has made a significant contribution to the establishment of a new research technology, called embryo manipulation. In so doing, she has opened a new era in developmental research. The study of the development of the nervous and immune systems of animals has been especially needed, because these systems play critical roles in supporting the life of higher animals, including Homo sapiens.

Through her recent studies on the various functional disorders of the nervous system arising in chimaeras with respect to the development of the immune system, she has shown that the use of chimaeric animals presents a completely new viewpoint for investigating human nervous diseases. Her technology and research on developmental biology, which have opened up a bright future for the basic understanding of the causes of serious human diseases, are most worthy of the Kyoto Prize, especially in the “Age of Biology” when other sciences and technologies are learning so much from living organisms.