Two international teams of scientists say they have found a way to make human skin cells behave like embryonic stem cells, a development that holds the potential for medical breakthroughs without the controversial process of cloning. VOA's Jessica Berman reports.

Both teams did essentially the same thing, reprogrammed the skin cells to begin behaving like embryonic stem cells. Called pluripotent cells, the stem cells can be coaxed to grow into any cell in the body.

James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin is co-author of the U.S. paper published in Science.

Thomson notes it's been about 10 years since researchers derived the first stem cell lines which ignited the controversy that has continued up until today.

"And I believe these new results while they don't eliminate that controversy, is probably the beginning of the end of that controversy, because I think more and more labs will pursue a reprogramming path to get pluripotent cells rather than deriving them from embryos," he said.

Thomson believes over time, more and more labs will be moving away from embryonic stem cell research in favor of the reprogramming of ordinary cells. There's been strong opposition to embryonic stem cell research because the embryo must be destroyed.

In the journal Cell, Shinya Yamanaka and colleagues at Kyoto University report they created nerve and heart cells out of reprogrammed stem cells.

Yamanaka says the researchers found they were able to coax the newly created stem cells to produce a range of other tissue cells.

"For example, we were able to make muscle and fat tissue, and so on," he said."datetime">

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