It was a huge year for stem cell research, with the most glory going to Japan’s Shinya Yamanaka, who “reprogrammed” adult skin cells into embryoniclike stem cells, capable of morphing into any of the human body’s other cell types. But Boston also scored big, with Mass General biologist Konrad Hochedlinger inducing cells taken from the tails of mice to regress to the embryonic stem cell stage. Meanwhile, Kevin Eggan of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute showed that fertilized eggs, if frozen before they start to divide, can be cloned into a new entity, a potential source of human embryonic stem cells that can be used for therapy. Finally, Jacob Hanna and Rudolf Jaenisch of the MIT-affiliated Whitehead Institute demonstrated that genetically- altered stem cells, made without tissue from human embryos, can cure disease – they used the cells to successfully treat sickle cell anemia in laboratory mice.