Final report to be released next week on Hwang Woo-suk's stem cell research scandal: Panel

The final investigation report over South Korean clone expert Hwang Woo-suk's stem cell research will be released early next week, said an ad hoc panel responsible for the probing on Friday.

"The panel plans to conclude its official activities on Jan. 10 by holding a press briefing at Seoul National University (SNU) to give out a final report on the investigation," said the special panel of the SNU in a statement earlier in the day.

The South Korean renowned university set up the 9-member panel in mid-December 2005 when various controversy surrounding Hwang's stem cell research appeared.

The final report, expected to be 50 to 100 pages long, will not only focus on whether Hwang's team has the technology to create patient-tailored stem cells, but on the authenticity of Hwang's paper published in Science in 2004 on the first cloned embryonic stem cell line and the one published in Britain-based journal of Nature over first cloned dog in the world, said the statement.

It is also expected to include the number of ova used, the procurement process and whether the panel will allow Hwang to try to produce the stem cells again.

Hwang published a paper in the international journal Science in May last year claiming he had succeeded in producing 11 patient- specific stem cell lines.

However, in the previous two reports, the panel respectively concluded Hwang's research team fabricated partial results in the paper published in May 2005 and no patient-tailored embryonic stem cell lines Hwang's team claimed exist currently.

Source: Xinhua