WEDNESDAY, Jan. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists at Stanford University have succeeded in creating brain nerve cells directly out of skin cells taken from the tails of adult mice.

The new approach could revolutionize human stem cell therapy and science's understanding of how cells choose and maintain their specialized roles in the body, the researchers said.

The findings also seem to radically upturn established thinking about how cells become cells, and potentially avoid the controversial approach of using embryonic stem cells for cellular therapy. And the research could conceivably open new doors in the future to treating diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, the researchers said.

The researchers had not actually expected to succeed in the endeavor.

"We were blown away," said Dr. Marius Wernig, senior author of a paper appearing online Jan. 27 in Nature and a member of Stanford's Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.