Aggregated News

Korean scientists are moving closer to cloning embryonic stem cells, the unprecedented breakthrough that their compatriot and disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk claimed to have achieved in 2004, only to have this disproved later.

Currently, a team at the Cha Medical Center is working on a project after getting state approval last year, while another team headed by professor Park Se-pill at Jeju National University is also set to begin research.

Park and his associates are awaiting final approval from the National Bioethics Committee.

"If the endorsement is made before June, we should be able to clone human embryonic stem cells sometime next year," said Park, who extracted stem cells from human embryos, not cloned ones, in 2000.

"Our embryologists' technology is leading on the global scene. Hence, I believe that Korean teams should be able to create cloned embryonic stem cells in the not-so-distant future," he said.

Researchers both at home and abroad have channeled a huge amount of time and energy to clone embryonic stem cells as they are hailed as a future panacea that can deal with hard-to-treat...