Found by Accident. Proven by Science.
In 2010, Professor Mari Dezawa at Tohoku University left an enzyme in a petri dish overnight. By morning, nearly every cell had died. One survived.
That single cell turned out to be something the world had never documented before — a naturally occurring pluripotent stem cell with built-in stress tolerance. Dezawa named it the MUSE cell.
The discovery was published the same year Professor Shinya Yamanaka received global attention for induced pluripotent stem cells. Yamanaka’s work eventually earned a Nobel Prize. MUSE cells, largely overshadowed at the time, are now generating serious scientific interest because they may offer the same pluripotent advantages without the tumor risk that has blocked iPSC clinical translation for over a decade.
ATOM is among the first to bring MUSE cells into clinical practice in the United States.