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TORONTO — A Canadian-led international team of researchers has begun solving the mystery of how a cell taken from a person’s skin is reprogrammed into an embryonic-like stem cell, from which any other cell type in the body can be generated.

The research is being touted as a breakthrough in regenerative medicine that will allow scientists to one day harness stem cells to treat or even cure a host of conditions, from blindness and Parkinson’s disease to diabetes and spinal-cord injuries.

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In addition to creating the reprogramming road map, the scientists also identified a new type of stem cell, called an F-class stem cell due to its fuzzy appearance. Their work is detailed in five papers published Wednesday in the prestigious journals Nature and Nature Communications.

Dr. Andras Nagy, a senior scientist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, led the team of 50 researchers from Canada, the Netherlands, South Korea and Australia, which spent four years analyzing and cataloguing the day-by-day process that occurs in stem-cell reprogramming.