In the near future it may be possible for patients, who are very ill, to grow their own livers in the near future. Researchers from the Cambridge University, in a novel attempt, turned slivers of skin from patients’ arms into liver cells.

Reports submitted by the Daily mail say that this technique could potentially regenerate full-sized livers, each of them being a perfect match to the patient. The breakthrough will also fasten the search for better and newer drugs for a condition which kills more Britons every year compared to diabetes and traffic accidents combined.

The experiments were done by involving taking slivers of skin from patients with inherited liver diseases and converting these into stem cells and then coaxing them into becoming liver cells.

Cambridge researcher Tamir Rashid said, “It is a bit like getting an orchestra to change from playing classical music to rock music. The cell has the same genetic material, we have only changed the type of music it is playing. It has gone from a skin type of music to a liver type of music and that is exciting.”