Springhill Group: Korean Cloning Fraud Case Advances Stem Cell Research/the-looser-it-s... - 0 views
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rayen zitkala on 27 Jul 12WEDNESDAY, Aug. 1 (HealthDay News) -- Experts sifting through data from the discredited 2004 South Korean human cloning study say it may have had one positive outcome: the creation of human embryonic stem cells in a whole new way. The scientists who defrauded the world into thinking they had created the world's first human embryonic stem cells via cloning actually did achieve something, new research shows, just not what they had claimed. The Seoul team created the first-ever human embryonic stem cells from a process known as parthenogenesis, a process that creates an embryo by "tricking" the egg into thinking it has been fertilized. "For years, scientists have been seeking a method for making patient-specific embryonic stem cells. We've been trying to do that with nuclear transfer [cloning] and that hadn't worked," said study senior author Dr. George Q. Daley, associate director of the Stem Cell Program at Children's Hospital Boston. "Now we've found that if you're a young woman, you can make embryonic stem cells from your eggs. This gets us to making a customized, patient-specific stem cell without having to go through nuclear transfer," he said. "It represents a very important advance." "These cells are important potentially for making stem cells that aren't going to have a problem with the immune system of the host. It's another route," added Paul R. Sanberg, distinguished professor of neurosurgery and director of the University of South Florida Center for Aging and Brain Repair, in Tampa. "The stem cell field continues to move forward in spite of controversy. As we go forward, we will get more answers and theories as far as stem cells work and the best ways to make them." In 2004, Dr. Hwang Woo-Suk of Seoul National University published a paper in Science purporting to have created embryonic stem cells using somatic cell nuclear transfer, or cloning. Amid a worldwide flurry of accusations and finger-pointing, the journal retracted the pap