Japan’s Nobel laureate to help India battle sickle cell anaemia

Japan on Sunday agreed work with India on a treatment for sickle cell anaemia after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on his first official visit to that country, sought help for finding remedy to the deadly disease common among tribal populations in India.

Modi, who has been keenly looking for a remedy to the disease since his days as Chief Minister of Gujarat, discussed the issue with Nobel Prize winner for medicine (2012) S Yamanaka when he visited Kyoto University.

The Prime Minister raised the issue during his visit to the Stem Cell Research facility of the university.

Yamanaka is a stem cell pioneer. After peeping through various microscopes with his guidance, Modi asked Yamanaka to help battle sickle cell anaemia in India.

The Japanese scientist, who has been to India, agreed, and Tokyo and Delhi are now looking at an agreement to help fight the hereditary disorder in which the body's red blood cells take on a sickle shape, and contain defective haemoglobin.

In India, the disease is found mostly commonly among tribal populations in some parts of Gujarat and Orissa as well as in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattigarh.

After his visit to the lab on the second day of his Japan tour, the Prime Minister said, ''I wanted to understand stem cell research because cultural heritage matters to me as much as scientific heritage. I want to integrate both to make India a developed country.''

Akemi Nakamura, a spokesperson for Yamanaka's stem cell research institute, said, ''The Indian Prime Minister and Dr Yamanaka had a conversation for about 30 minutes. It was indeed a proud moment for us.''

Officials said the prospect of cooperation on sickle cell anaemia is a ''promising start'' towards combating the disease.

Yamanaka won the Nobel Prize along with British scientist John Gurdon for his work on stem cells. He made the groundbreaking discovery that 'induced pluripotent stem cells' could be derived from adult cells and potentially substituted, in research and therapy, for embryonic stem cells.

That discovery was prompted by his reluctance to use live embryos for research.