German researchers turn skin cells into stem cells

German medical researchers have cure serious liver disease in pests using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in an important first that shows promise for use in people with liver metabolism ailments.

The researchers from Muenster and Hanover took skin cells beginning the mice, return them to an embryonic state and subsequently correct a gene defect in the cells. The cells be then used to create healthy mice.

“For the first time, a living organism have been cured of an illness using iPS cells repaired using genetic methods,” researcher Tobias Cantz tell the German Press Agency dpa.Cantz’s team from the Max Planck Institute designed for molecular biomedicine in Muenster and their colleagues at the Hanover—based Institute for Cell and Molecular Pathology available their results in the scientific publication PLoS Biology.