Still No Stem Cells Via Easy ‘STAP’ Path

December 18, 2014

(Nature) – Haruko Obokata, the Japanese stem-cell biologist whose papers caused a sensation earlier this year before being retracted, has not succeeded in an attempt to replicate the controversial experiments, the Japanese media has reported. The original papers, which Obokata co-authored and published in Nature in January claimed to provide a way of producing ‘pluripotent’ stem cells — cells with the ability to develop into almost any cell type in the body — by a much easier route than used by earlier methods, including a technology that won the 2012 physiology Nobel prize.