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A year to the day after the public fall from grace of the stem cell fraudster Hwang Woo-suk shattered Korean hopes to emerge as a bioengineering hub, the science is progressing by leaps and bounds elsewhere. It was on Nov. 15, 2005 that Prof. Gerald Schatten of Pittsburgh University hastily severed ties with Hwang, triggering a chain reaction that was to see Hwang defrocked and Schatten himself plunged into scandal. Once a national hero promised virtually unlimited funding by a grateful nation, Hwang stood exposed as having faked papers that claimed he grew stem cells from cloning patients¡¯ own tissue, a fiction that had raised false hopes among millions of patients with incurable diseases.
With Hwang's overweening personal ambition went much of Korea¡¯s nascent bioengineering industry. In the year since, countries elsewhere have made significant if rather quieter progress in their stem cell research. They are eager to expand support for the science and have notched up research successes that can actually be applied to patients.
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Former Seoul National University Prof. Hwang Woo-suk
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Novocell, a stem cell engineering company in California, announced on Oct. 18 that it has developed a process that efficiently converts human embryonic stem cells into insulin-producing pancreatic endocrine cells. The company said once animal tests confirm the safety and validity of its findings, it will apply for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to start clinical tests to directly transplant such cells into diabetic patients at the end of 2008.
A joint research team of the University of London and the University of Michigan succeeded in restoring vision in mice by implanting new light-sensing stem cells in their eyes. The findings were published in the magazine Nature on Nov. 8.
Doctors in the U.K. are to conduct a medical trial using stem cells to treat heart attack patients by injecting 50 patients with stem cells taken from their own bone marrow within this month.
Naturally, the results are due to funding. The state of California decided to spend US$150 million on supporting stem cell research in addition to funding from the federal government, and the U.K. plans to invest up to 820 million pounds in the next decade for the same purpose. Japan, Australia and Singapore also expanded their investment in stem cell research last year.
Researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) announced in early June this year that they are to begin experiments to clone human embryonic stem cells using somatic cell nuclear transfer in a bid to develop treatments for a wide range of now-incurable conditions. The university will use human eggs left over from infertility treatment and receive egg donations. Among the team, George Daley, Doug Melton and Kevin Eggan had sought to work with Hwang.
Japan wants to revise a law that bans human cloning to partly allow research on cloning human embryonic cells. Australia's Senate voted on Nov. 7 to end the country's four-year ban on cloning human embryos for stem cell research.
A team from the University of Milan announced in June that they succeeded in deriving human stem cell lines by parthenogenesis, or grown from unfertilized eggs, thus dodging qualms about destroying viable embryos to grow stem cells. The team said they derived two cell lines from 104 eggs donated by women at a local fertility clinic. The cell lines were differentiated into neurons, sources said.
Shinya Yamanaka, a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences in Kyoto, Japan, and his team announced the same month that they succeeded in turning adult cells back into embryonic stem cells.
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In a poignant symbol of Hwang Woo-suk¡¯s fall from grace, the farm where he conducted experiments to transplant cloned stem cells into gnotobiotic (sterilized) pigs has long been turned into an ordinary pig farm. Above the feedbox are lighting devices Hwang used for operations.
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Yet despite the depressed atmosphere, Korean researchers, too, are making some progress. Kim Kwang-soo together with Miles Cunningham at Harvard Medical School and Prof. Kim Dong-wook at Yonsei University at the end of last month announced findings that injecting stem cells into mice with symptoms of anxiety and depression led to improvement of their conditions.
"The Korean government set up a plan to channel roughly US$454 million into stem cell research over the next decade" to become one of the world's top three powerhouses in the potential-laden stem cell segment, the journal Science reported recently. It predicted embryonic stem cell research could begin earlier than expected thanks to competition among fertility clinics including Pochon CHA University, Maria Biotech, and even the scandal-ridden MizMedi Hospital.
Meanwhile, the sixth hearing of Hwang¡¯s fraud case at the Seoul District Court on Monday drew crowds despite coming some five months since the trial started. The 190-seat court room was packed, with some having to stand in the isles or at the back. Hwang, charged with embezzling public and private research funds, answered questions from the prosecutor with characteristic fluency. He again denied falsifying data and reiterated his claim that he was ¡°deceived¡± by junior researcher Kim Seon-jong. The prosecutor and Hwang engaged in a heated exchange at one point when the defendant interrupted the prosecutor, saying "Let me explain first" and the prosecutor shouted back, "You answer my question first.¡± Some in the courtroom gave Hwang a round of applause and hollered "Cheer up!" after the hearing.
When reporters asked Hwang about Korea¡¯s retreat in bioengineering research, he said, "The issue needs to be seen from the perspective of the national interest." He declined to answer other questions. Hwang has been incommunicado after he was fired by Seoul National University and charged in May. But he is gathering die-hard supporters to start research again, setting up the Suam Bioengineering Research Institute to study animal stem cells with money from the Suam Scholarship Foundation. Some 20 researchers including graduate students who had worked on Hwang's former SNU team have reportedly joined the team.
Hwang's lawyers are suing to have his permit to conduct human embryonic stem cell research restored, which was withdrawn when the journal Science retracted his papers. Hwang is also suing SNU for unfair dismissal in the Administrative Court. In August, he requested a review of disciplinary measures SNU took over his research fraud, but this was rejected.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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