CGS-authored
Two teams of scientists reported Tuesday that they have developed a relatively easy method of converting human skin cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells - a feat that could quell the ethical and political controversy that has hampered the promising science.
Without having to make or destroy an embryo, the scientists generated cells that looked and behaved like embryonic stem cells. The cells appear capable of morphing into any of the 220 cell types of the body, a first step toward developing tailor-made medical therapies.
"The induced cells do all the things embryonic stem cells do," said James Thompson, the leader of one of the teams and the University of Wisconsin researcher who first coaxed stem cells from human embryos. "It's going to completely change the field. These cells are more clinically relevant than embryonic stem cells."
Excited scientists said the research, described in two scientific journal articles released Tuesday, is as momentous as the 1996 cloning of a sheep named Dolly and Thompson's 1998 isolation of embryonic stem cells.
One scientist went so far as to call...