"Our finding offers new ways of generating stem cells for patients with dysfunctional or damaged tissues and organs," study researcher Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health & Science University, said in a press release. "Such stem cells can regenerate and replace those damaged cells and tissues and alleviate diseases that affect millions of people."

To put it in very simplified terms: the researchers first harvest a human egg from a woman's ovaries and completely remove her genetic material from the egg. Then, they take a human skin cell and insert it into the egg using an inactivated virus which fuses the two cells. The embryo that grows from this would be a genetic copy of the person that donated the cell.