Reuters reports — Scientists from Britain and Japan shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday for the discovery that adult cells can be reprogrammed back into stem cells which can turn into any kind of tissue and may one day repair damaged organs.

John Gurdon, 79, of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, Britain and Shinya Yamanaka, 50, of Kyoto University in Japan, discovered ways to create tissue that would act like embryonic cells, without the need to harvest embryos.

The big hope for stem cells is that they can be used to replace damaged tissues in everything from spinal cord injuries to Parkinson's disease. Read the full story.

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Reuters reports:

Researchers in Japan used embryonic stem cells to grow healthy mouse sperm on laboratory dishes, a development which could help treat human infertility, they said Friday.

The finding, published in the journal Cell, marks a step forward for using stem cells for regenerative medicine.

Stem cells are the body's master cells and source of all cells and tissues. Because they can grow into different types of cells and multiply, experts hope to harness them to treat diseases and disorders, including cancer and diabetes.

Scientists at Kyoto University removed stem cells from mouse embryos and managed to coax them into a type of precursor cell known to grow into either mouse eggs or sperm.

They then transplanted these cells into the testes of infertile male mice -- which apparently went on to produce healthy sperm.

"The sperm were removed directly from the testes and fertilized with eggs (on laboratory dishes)," said lead author Mitinori Saitou, a professor at Kyoto University's department of anatomy and cell biology.

"After insemination, we made two set of embryos and these were transferred into the uterus of the foster mother and they derived healthy mice (that went on to reproduce normally)."

"We have huge materials to work with now and ... we can accelerate our study into the cause of human infertility," Saitou told Reuters.