Discredited STAP Cells Were Likely Embryonic Stem Cells

December 29, 2014

(Science) – Tying up a loose end of a long-running stem cell research fiasco, yet another RIKEN investigating committee released yet another report in Tokyo today. It concludes that the so-called stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) stem cells, as well as the chimeric mice and teratomas supposedly derived from those cells, “all originated in cultures contaminated with (embryonic stem) cells, a fact that refutes all of the main conclusions of the two papers” that reported the the supposed breakthrough method of reprogramming adult cells. Those two papers, an article and a letter, appeared online at Nature on 29 January.