Science: Stem Cells Without Embryos

Tue, Nov 20, 2007 at 12:37:49 pm PST

Scientists have done an end run around the ethical problems of stem cell research: Stem cells without embryos: skin cells transformed.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two separate teams of researchers announced on Tuesday they had transformed ordinary skin cells into batches of cells that look and act like embryonic stem cells — but without using cloning technology and without making embryos.

Their breakthroughs could make possible the long-sought goal of tailor-made medicine, but without the political, scientific and ethical roadblock of using human embryos.

Both teams call the new cells induced pluripotent stem cells and say they look and act like embryonic stem cells — the master cells that give rise to every cell and tissue in the body.

“We can now envisage a time when a simple approach can be used to produce stem cells that are able to form any tissue from a small sample taken from any of us,” Ian Wilmut of the Scottish Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement.