"The two scientists who won this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine discovered that cells in our body have the remarkable ability to reinvent themselves. They found that every cell in the human body, from our skin and bones to our heart and brain, can be coaxed into forming any other cell."

"The process is called reprogramming, and its potential for new drugs and therapies is vast. If neurons or heart cells are damaged by disease or aging, then cells from the skin or blood potentially could be induced to reprogram themselves and repair the damaged tissue."

"The winners — John Gurdon of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, England, and Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan and the Gladstone Institute in San Francisco — made their discoveries more than 40 years apart."