British researcher John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan won this year's Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday 8th October for discovering that mature, specialized cells of the body can be reprogrammed into stem cells, a discovery that scientists hope to turn into new treatments.Dr. Matilde Lleonart, head of the research group in oncology and molecular pathology at VHIR, gives her opinion about the prize in the pages of the journal El Punt Avui assuring that "Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are a hope for the regeneration of damaged tissues. The possibilities go from the application in neurodegeneratives diseases to cancer or diabetes, though it is necessary to improve the process of cellular manipulation to guarantee that it does not originate tumors. iPSCs are also useful to induce and to study models of diseases".