Knocking out genes with a role in cancer prevention helps produce stem cells.Switching off the p53 pathway helped researchers to make stem-like cells.Wikimedia Commons Specialized adult cells made 'immortal' through the blockade of an antitumour pathway can be turned into stem-like cells quickly and efficiently.The findings — which should make it easier to generate patient-specific cells from any tissue type, including certain diseased cells that have proved difficult to transform — suggest that cellular reprogramming and cancer formation are inextricably linked.Since 2006, when Shinya Yamanaka of Japan's Kyoto University first created induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells1 — which can develop...