Hundreds of South Korean scientists expressed outrage Wednesday after a controversial figure accused of covering up a notorious stem cell research fraud was appointed as the country's top technology official. Park Ki-Young was appointed to head a newly-created science centre, putting her in charge of allocating government subsidies and budgets for research projects. But a decade ago Park was a key figure in a scandal involving the fabrication of research by prominent stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-Suk. "Her name is far from innovation. The name is rather a nightmare to science and technology workers," a group of 240 young scientists said in a statement. It called on President Moon Jae-In to scrap the appointment, announced earlier this week, accusing Park of remaining "unrepentant" despite being "at the centre" of the scandal surrounding Hwang. The scientist was lauded as the "pride of Korea" after claiming to have derived stem cell lines from cloned human embryosa world firstin two articles published in the journal Science in 2004 and 2005. But his research was later found to be fraudulent and riddled with ethical lapses. Park played a key role in supporting Hwang and his research projects with generous government subsidies when she served … Continue reading →

See more of the story The clinics offer futuristic-sounding treatments for everything from eye problems to osteoarthritis. Listed on a government website, they present the opportunity to participate in clinical trials to test the potential of one of the most promising tools in medicine the bodys own stem cells. Its an attractive pitch for many patients, even though some of the clinics charge $6,000 and up to participate. Now, with a national debate raging over the future of one of the hottest frontiers in 21st-century medicine, a University of Minnesota bioethicist has taken center stage in questioning whether many of these services are legitimate. You have these businesses that dont have meaningful clinical research going on, the Us Leigh Turner said in an interview. There is a risk for fraud, in that people may be charged thousands of dollars to get an intervention that has no chance of working. Turner has emerged as a major critic of the clinics, some of which he says have flawed procedures that allow bias to distort the results of treatment studies. He also says allowing clinics to list studies can imply government approval, lending false legitimacy to marketing pitches. My concern is that you … Continue reading →

Dr Leonie Quinn looking at Drosophila (vinegar flies) through the microscope. Credit: Stuart Hay, ANU New research highlights the significant role the surrounding environment of stem cells, known as the niche, might play in the brain size of babies with microcephaly. Mutations in certain genes have been linked with small brains (microcephaly), dwarfism and other developmental defects. Since the discovery of these microcephaly genes, extensive research has been conducted to determine how they cause smaller brains in patients. Although much research has focused on defective neural stem cell function as the likely culprit in causing small brains in patients with a mutation in the microcephaly protein WDR62, researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) have found that reduced brain size is caused by loss of WDR62 function in the stem cell microenvironment. "Using genetic models we found when this gene was mutated in the neural stem cells the brain size wasn't affected at all. The neural stem cells were reduced but the other cells in the brain compensate," said Dr Quinn group leader at The John Curtin School of Medical Research at ANU. "Instead, only reduction of WDR62 in the stem cell microenvironment (or niche) severely reduces brain growth by … Continue reading →