In reference to my earlier post on a new 'discovery' on stem cells (linked at: http://www.thebeautyofmedicine.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-new-way-of-creating-stem-cells.html), it turns out that scientists were not able to reproduce the work by this Japanese team of biologists at the RIKEN Centre for Developmental Biology. The idea behind the research, if you haven't read my earlier post, was basically to mimic bodily stress during an injury to cause blood cells to revert back to their embryonic stem cell state. The team claimed, in the journal Nature, that placing the white blood cells of adult mice into a weak acid solution (pH of about 5.7), they were able to cause the cell to do just this. Profesor Ryoji Novori, who is the President of the Riken, admits that this must be seriously reevaluated as a result of reports illustrating mistakes made during the scientific procedure.
I find this rather quite disappointing since I had become incredibly excited upon hearing the news of the new research and reading its paper. We'll see how it plays out, but I highly doubt this paper will remain credible, as even a few of the researchers themselves admitted to making mistakes throughout the experiment. I guess we will still have to wait for a better method of creating stem cells :/
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