Скачать или смотреть Lab at centre of paper retraction unable to replicate stem cell results

(27 Aug 2014) The Japanese laboratory that retracted a paper reporting a potentially major breakthrough in stem cell research said on Wednesday its researchers have not managed to replicate the results.
Scientists at the government-affiliated Riken Centre for Developmental Biology said they are still trying to match results reported in two papers published by the journal Nature in January and then retracted in July.
But they refused to say whether or not they expected to succeed in doing so.
"It's like asking scientists to try to predict the odds of winning the lottery," Shinichi Aizawa, who is overseeing the project, told reporters at a news conference.
He later said his analogy was not entirely apt in explaining his reluctance to speculate on the chances for success.
Riken scientist Haruko Obokata, originally lauded for leading the research that raised hopes for a discovery of a simple way to grow replacement tissue for various diseases, is participating in the experiments.
They are to continue until next March.
Obokata and other researchers in Boston and Japan participating in the project said they had used a simple procedure to turn ordinary cells from mice into stem cells.
They exposed cells from spleens of newborn mice to a more acidic environment than they are usually accustomed.
Having failed to generate the stem cells using spleen cells from one type of mouse, the scientists plan to use cells from another type of mouse, and from other organs, and to alter the methods of stressing those cells, according to Aizawa.
The discovery of problems with the original research caused an uproar and prompted an investigation at Riken.
One senior Japanese scientist involved in the research died earlier this month in an apparent suicide.
Riken announced plans on Wednesday for an organisational overhaul to prevent any further problems, changing its director and reducing the number of researchers by half.


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