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.
About Elly Tanaka
Elly Tanaka studied biochemistry at the University of California in San Francisco, USA, and at Harvard University in Boston, USA. After a research stay at the Ludwig Cancer Research Institute in London, UK, she moved to the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden. Since 2008, she has held a professorship for animal models of regeneration at the Technical University of Dresden. From 2014 to 2016, she also served as director of the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD). From 2016 to 2024, she worked as a senior scientist at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, Austria. Since 2024, Tanaka has been the Scientific Director at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) in Vienna. In 2024, Elly Tanaka was admitted to Leopoldina in the Genetics/Molecular Biology and Cell Biology Section.
About the Schleiden Medal
The Schleiden Medal is named after Academy member Matthias Jacob Schleiden (1804–1881). The botanist was a co-founder of cell theory. Since 1955, the medal has been awarded by Leopoldina for outstanding discoveries in the field of cell biology. The award will be presented to Elly Tanaka as part of the Leopoldina Symposium of Class II – Life Sciences on Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Halle (Saale).
About the Leopoldina
The Leopoldina originated in 1652 as a classical scholarly society and now has 1,700 members from almost all branches of science. In 2008, the Leopoldina was appointed as the German National Academy of Sciences and, in this capacity, was invested with two major objectives: representing the German scientific community internationally and providing policymakers and the public with science-based advice.