Researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston have found a new and safer method of obtaining stem cells from common skin cells. By using a cold virus to take transformative genes into ordinary mouse cells, the specialists managed to make them act just like embryonic stem cells.

Researchers want to transfer the method of manipulating ordinary cells to manifest like embryonic stem cells to human cells. If the method works with human cells as well, this would enable researchers to treat widespread diseases such as sickle cell anemia or Parkinson's.

The results of this study follow the breakthrough achievements of Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, who discovered a way of inserting four genes into the skin cells of mice or people to obtain “induced pluripotent stem cells.” This kind of cells was discovered by the Japanese researcher two years ago and act just like the ones from embryos with the ability to replace or regenerate body tissue.

The findings of the latest study were revealed in the journal Science on Thursday.

For those of you who don’t know, stem cells are the main cells of the body and they are called like that because from them all the tissues are stemming. The embryonic stem cells are the most important of the stem cells because they can give raise to all types of tissue.

The team of researchers led by Konrad Hochedlinger used the adenovirus, a virus widely used in gene therapy, to carry some genes into common cells and enable them to act like embryonic stem cells.

"The nice thing about adenoviruses in contrast with retroviruses is they deliver proteins inside the cells but they will never, ever integrate their DNA into the cells," Hochedlinger told Reuters.