Reprogramming allows us to turn any cell of the body into a stem cell. Since its discovery in 2006 the technique has become widely used in labs around the world. But the process is inefficient and many questions remain about how reprogramming works. PhD student James O'Malley is studying some of these challenging issues. Here he talks about his latest findings, which were published in the journal Nature on 2 June 2013.

Last month, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 was awarded jointly to Sir John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent".

STEM CELLS - THE FUTURE: AN INTRODUCTION TO IPS CELLS by Amy Hardie and Clare Blackburn tells the story of this extraordinary scientific discovery that has changed the way we think about human biology.

Researchers at the University of Bonn artificially derive brain stem cells directly from the connective tissue of mice

Scientists at the Life & Brain Research Center at the University of Bonn, Germany, have succeeded in directly generating brain stem cells from the connective tissue cells of mice. These stem cells can reproduce and be converted into various types of brain cells. To date, only reprogramming in brain cells that were already fully developed or which had only a limited ability to divide was possible. The new reprogramming method presented by the Bonn scientists and submitted for publication in July 2011 now enables derivation of brain stem cells that are still immature and able to undergo practically unlimited division to be extracted from conventional body cells. The results have now been published in the current edition of the prestigious journal Cell Stem Cell.

The ability to convert one cell type into another has caused great excitement in the stem cell field. Two techniques exist: one reprograms somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), the other converts somatic cells directly into other types of specialized cells by transdifferentiation. These techniques raise high hopes that patient-personalized cell therapies will become a reality in the not-so-distant future.