Amid S. Korea scandal, cloning race is on
Mass., British teams at stem cell forefront
The announcement yesterday that a South Korean scientist fabricated much of a landmark cloning paper has raised the stakes for scientists in Massachusetts and England who are now seen as the front-runners in the effort to clone human cells.
After weeks of mounting evidence against him, the definitive end of Hwang Woo Suk's scientific career came at a press conference early yesterday, in which investigators for Seoul National University announced he had faked at least nine of the 11 batches of cloned human embryonic stem cells he claimed to have made earlier this year. The claim was hailed as a major advance when it was published in May, because it seemed to bring nearer a day when scientists could efficiently custom-make stem cells matched to a patient's genes, which would boost research into a range of diseases and possibly lead to new treatments.
Hwang resigned in disgrace after the announcement, but insisted that he does have the technology to clone human stem cells -- a claim many now doubt. The investigators said that they were examining the rest of Hwang's research, as they awaited the results of tests that would show whether the remaining batches of stem cells were cloned, or merely part of his elaborate fiction.
The scandal marks a sudden shift in the global landscape of stem cell research. South Koreans reacted with shock yesterday as their nation went from the leader in cloning human stem cells to home of the man who perpetrated one of the most dramatic scientific frauds in modern history. Yet many biologists remain convinced that cloning human cells is a technical problem that will be solved, not a biological impossibility. And so, for the elite scientists interested in cloning cells -- prime among them a handful of teams in the United Kingdom and Massachusetts -- the race to be first is back on.
''All of these groups are going to take a deep breath and work harder," said Dr. Robert Goldstein, chief scientist at the New York-based Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which funds embryonic stem cell research around the world. ''I would not underestimate the technical prowess and intellectual ability of the groups at Harvard and elsewhere."
The team led by Hwang presented the first evidence that it had cloned human cells in 2004, and then followed up in the May paper with a claim that it had significantly improved its technique. The two announcements, both published in the respected journal Science, electrified the scientific community.
But Hwang admitted in November that he had used eggs donated by scientists in his lab for the research, an ethically questionable practice that he had denied in the past. Then, this month, two key colleagues challenged his 2005 paper, suggesting he had exaggerated what he had accomplished. By the end of last week, Hwang announced that he was retracting the paper, but he insisted that his team had created cloned stem cells but had also made good-faith errors.
As the crisis escalated, the university secured Hwang's laboratory and began an investigation. The initial results, announced yesterday, were that the Hwang team created the impression that it had cloned cells by simply placing cells from a single patient into two different test tubes and then running DNA tests, which of course matched.
''Based on these facts, the data in the 2005 Science paper cannot be some error from a simple mistake, but can only be seen as a deliberate fabrication to make it look like 11 stem-cell lines using results from just two," the panel said.
The investigators said that they would now carefully examine the team's 2004 paper. This week, the Globe reported that key photographs in that paper, purporting to show cloned stem cells, also appeared in other, unrelated papers, labeled as cells created without cloning. Editors at the journal Science have said that they will investigate those photographs, and the rest of the paper. The journal released a short statement yesterday, saying that it had been notified of the findings of the university committee and expected the formal retraction in ''a timely manner."
The Hwang team's claim to have cloned a dog this year is also under investigation, by Seoul University and by Nature, the journal where the results were published.
Cloned stem cells are created by placing DNA from a patient into an egg cell that has had its nucleus removed. This is stimulated to grow and embryonic stem cells are harvested. Researchers can also get embryonic stem cells from frozen embryos, left over from fertility treatments, but cloned stem cells can be created with the DNA of patients who have diseases, giving scientists a new way to study how those diseases develop.
The scandal will probably provide ammunition for those who opposed the research, on the grounds that it involves destroying what they consider human lives. But a critic of the research said yesterday that the scandal paled in comparison with the concern over the human embryos -- balls of several hundred cells -- which are destroyed in the course of the research.
''It is not just Dr. Hwang's dishonesty that casts a black eye on the field of embryonic stem cell science," said the Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education for the National Catholic
For scientists at Advanced Cell Technology, a Worcester-based biotech company, the revelations have been particularly difficult to take. By the fall of 2003, a team there was close to creating cloned human embryonic stem cells, according to Dr. Robert Lanza, a scientist there.
But when the South Koreans made their announcement, in the beginning of 2004, Lanza said the company's investors withdrew their funding, believing they were too far behind. Lanza said that when his team read the South Korean paper carefully, they didn't believe the techniques used could have worked -- but by then it was too late.
''We were considered failures," said Lanza.
Lanza said that the company now has new funding and hopes to try again.
Two other Massachusetts teams are planning to create cloned stem cells, one led by Dr. George Q. Daley, a Harvard Medical School scientist at Children's Hospital Boston, and the other at Harvard University. Both teams are awaiting final approval for the experiments, from all the institutions involved. These scientists said that they will now have to figure out how to create cloned stem cells, which they need for their research, without the benefit of following the example of scientists who have already figured the process out.
''This sad news from Korea in no way weakens our belief in all the demonstrably valid experiments indicating that stem cell science holds the promise of eventually providing the basis of treatments and cures for numerous presently intractable chronic diseases," read a statement released by Douglas Melton, who is involved in the Harvard University effort and is codirector of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. ''It simply means that we still need to take important steps we thought had already been taken."
Reporting from South Korea was provided by the Associated Press. Gareth Cook can be reached at cook@globe.com. 
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
