WASHINGTON, D.C.-- First, South Korean scientists stunned the world by cloning a human embryo. Now, using that technology and snippets of skin, they've created the first embryonic stem cells that genetically match injured or sick patients.
And they did so in ways that make it far faster and easier to grow human stem cells than many researchers thought possible.
Writing today in the journal Science, they report that they produced 11 human stem cells lines.
The stem cell lines are genetic matches of 11 patients aged 2 to 56.
Previously, the same group, led by Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and Dr. Shin Yong Moon of Seoul National University, produced a single stem cell line from a cloned embryo, but the process was so onerous that scientists said it was not worth trying to repeat it, and some doubted the South Koreans' report was even correct.
Now things have changed.
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