In the article, the author also used terms like "reprogramming". That sounds very 'geeky' to me. It feels like this: we can imagine those scientists were computer programmers, those skin cells are the instances of a certain SkinCell class (presumably derivative class of a base class Cell), their goals were to convert SkinCell instances into Neuron (another derivative class of Cell). Previous approaches involve two steps by using casting: SkinCell -> Cell -> Neuron. Those programmers are smarter, they managed to accomplish it in one shot. What they did (not very clear in the article, so I'm guessing here) by directly modifying type information of those instances. They must be using a certain kind of dynamic language.
Does anyone know how this would benefit an M.S. patient? It seems like it would be beneficial for recovery during an episode.