Some day — when your heart needs healing, your bones need bonding or your skin needs stitching — clusters of new cells now growing in a Stanford University lab could offer a fix.

For the first time, researchers at Stanford’s School of Medicine have quickly and efficiently generated pure colonies of 12 different specialized cell types from embryonic stem cells that could be used to repair the human body.

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Hank Greely, director of Stanford’s Center for Law and the Biosciences, called the research “really, really important if it holds up.”

“The problems of making or isolating pure samples of one specific cell type has been a substantial barrier to medical uses of embryonic stem cells. This research looks like a way around that problem,” he said.

“There are still other problems that need to be resolved,” such as immune system rejection of the cells, Greely added. To prevent that, researchers are exploring how to use cells made not from embryos but from the patient’s own body. “But every major problem solved means we are one step closer to a possible solution — with great medical benefits.”