Posted by Zebedee under blog's category : Research & medical benefits

The Guardian today carries an article on the ‘top 10' scientific breakthroughs of 2008, named by the leading scientific journal Science. At number one is the ‘feat of biological alchemy' that offers scientists the hope of growing replacement organs from patients' own skin cells.

Research in mice published just over a year ago showed that adult cells could be transformed into stem cells that could be made to regenerate all kinds of tissue to treat diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or diabetes. The insights from the mouse work on so-called iPS cells were blogged at the time by our friends over at Pro-Test.

We reported on follow-up research on the safety of the technique on the RDS website in February.

Pro-Test also blogged another of Science's 2008 top 10 in August, in an entry on the 2008 Nobel prize for chemistry. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory used fluorescent labelling to track all the cells in the zebrafish embryo during its first 24 hours, and used this information to construct a digital 3D model, allowing early embryonic development to be studied in unprecedented detail.