Word: hwang
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Stem-cell scientist Hwang Woo Suk, whose groundbreaking cloning of human embryos thrust South Korea to the forefront of bioscience research, is fighting for his professional life in a controversy that is degenerating into one of the biggest scientific scandals in years...
...Hwang and his team of researchers at Seoul National University stunned the medical community in May when, in a study published in the U.S. journal Science, he reported that he had successfully produced tailor-made stem cells from 11 cloned human embryos-an unprecedented feat. Though controversial, Hwang's research was hailed as a breakthrough because it appeared to move scientists a step closer to being able to treat a variety of afflictions, from spinal-cord injuries to Alzheimer's, by using a patient's own dna to grow perfectly matched tissue to restore defective or damaged organs...
...Instead, Hwang acknowledged that the images published in Science were problematic, but provided his own explanation: that the stem cells were somehow mismanaged or possibly switched. In January, his team at Seoul National University had created six patient-specific stem cell lines, but they became contaminated. They reported the breach to the government and rescued two batches which they stored temporarily at their partner lab in Mizmedi Hospital. After Hwang's lab was cleaned and new sterilization procedures put into place, the stem cell lines came back to Hwang's lab. His team then went on to create six more...
...When producers of an investigative television program from MBC-TV raised questions about the validity of the stem cells following the egg-donor scandal, Hwang provided MBC-TV with samples from five stem cell lines, and cells from their donors, in an effort to prove their authenticity. It's not clear where these stem cells were stored. Hwang said he and his colleagues performed their own in-house test, including DNA fingerprinting to verify the source of the stem cells. It was then that he discovered that the fingerprints did not match those printed in Science. "We learned that...
...team is thawing five frozen stem cell lines and conducting DNA analysis to verify that he was indeed successful in using cloning techniques to extract stem cells from patients with diseases; those results will be available in 10 days. After that, Hwang will have either answered his critics or he'll have even more questions to face...