The Babraham Institute in Cambridge claimed on Thursday that it had successfully regenerated a 53-year-old woman's skin cells to look and function like those of a 23-year-old.
Using adult cells, the scientists set out to produce embryonic stem cells, which can divide into any type of cell in the body.
Shinya Yamanaka, a Nobel Laureate and researcher at Kyoto University in Japan, was the first to convert "normal" cells with a specified function into stem cells in 2006.
Yamanaka's study was developed upon by German molecular biologist Wolf Reik, postdoctoral student Diljeet Gill, and a team at the Babraham Institute, according to the BBC.
Yamanaka developed stem cells by exposing adult cells to four chemicals for 50 days, a technique he coined "iPS." Skin cells were exposed to the same chemicals for only 13 days before being allowed to develop in natural settings by Reik and Gill's team.
The researchers discovered that age-related alterations on skin cells were erased and they temporarily lost their identity by monitoring collagen formation in the cells. Researchers discovered that after growing under normal settings for a period of time, the cells began to behave like skin cells again.
According to Gill, the scientists assessed age-related biological changes in the reprogrammed cells and discovered that the cells matched the profile of people 30 years younger to reference data sets.