The scientist behind stem cell success story (South Korea)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/29/MNGHED0GBJ1.DTL

When Professor Hwang Woo Suk enters his stem cell laboratory in Building No. 85 at Seoul National University, the blue-suited junior scientists don't even look up from their microscopes.

Hwang and his team, whose groundbreaking stem cell study was released 10 days ago, are working at full speed on research that has left researchers in other countries wondering how the South Koreans did it.

"We have no holiday in this laboratory," said Hwang, who has never taken a vacation with his family.

Their study, published in the May 19 issue of the journal Science, marks a crucial step along the path toward potential stem cell-based therapies. Hwang's 43-member team -- collaborating with scientists in the United States and the United Kingdom and within Korea -- created 11 different stem cell lines that exactly match the DNA of human patients with a variety of diseases.

In February 2004, the Korean researchers successfully transferred a single woman's DNA to an embryo, using a batch of 242 eggs donated by 16 women. What's remarkable about their latest accomplishment is that it involved only 185 eggs from 18 donors; 11 new stem cell lines were created from males and females ages 2 to 56.