Stem-cell study thrives in Seoul

SEOUL — When professor Hwang Woo-suk enters his stem-cell laboratory in Building No. 85 at Seoul National University, the blue-suited junior scientists don’t even look up from their microscopes.

They don’t have time. “We have no holiday in this laboratory,” said Mr. Hwang, who has never taken a vacation with his family.

But they do sense his intense presence. Since the world’s premier geneticist published a groundbreaking stem-cell study last month, Mr. Hwang and his team have not rested on their laurels. The lab works seven days a week, charging ahead with cutting-edge research that has left better-funded colleagues wondering how the South Koreans did it.

Although their study in the May 19 issue of the journal Science is far from providing the answer to disease cures, it marks a key step in the direction. Mr. Hwang’s 43-member team — collaborating with scientists in the United States and Britain — isolated 11 stem-cell lines that match the genetic code of patients with a variety of diseases.

In February 2004, Mr. Hwang’s team successfully transferred DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid, the material that carries a person’s genetic code) to a batch of 242 eggs donated by 16 women. What is remarkable about his latest study is that it involved only 185 eggs from 18 donors, and 11 stem-cell lines were created.

The study is a leap for somatic-cell nuclear transfer, also know as “therapeutic cloning,” a procedure that uses days-old donated eggs. It is not illegal in the United States, but in 2001 President Bush halted federal funding for all but a few existing stem-cell lines, a move American scientists say has limited what could be promising advances in disease treatments. When stem cells are taken out of an embryo, the latter is destroyed.

Despite the threat of a presidential veto, the House last week voted to lift the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. The bill, which passed 238-194, fell short of the 290 votes needed to override a veto by Mr. Bush.

Mr. Hwang’s method involves removing the genetic material from an unfertilized human egg and injecting new genetic material. In his study, skin cells from humans were injected into the eggs whose original DNA was removed. After a slight electric charge, the eggs respond as if they had been fertilized: the cells multiply, producing new stem-cell lines using the DNA introduced from the skin cells.

It is hoped that the stem cells, which can be made compatible with different types of body tissues, can be used to repair damage from diseases such as Parkinson’s or spinal-cord injuries.

“He always says ‘Do not hurry. We need time,’ ” said Kang Sung-keun, an assistant professor who worked on the study with Mr. Hwang. “He doesn’t want to give patients false hopes.”

In contrast to such research in the United States, Mr. Hwang’s work has the full backing of the South Korean government. There are still ethical concerns in a country where nearly half of its 48 million people identify themselves as Christian, but the drive that typifies the country’s strong national spirit has supported Mr. Hwang’s research.

After pulling itself up by its bootstraps to become the world’s 12th largest economy, South Korea has come a long way since the end of the devastating Korean War in 1953.

Mr. Hwang, 52, grew up poor in South Chungcheong province. His mother raised cows, and this led to his interest in becoming a veterinarian.

“I came from a very isolated, very small area,” he said. “At the time, most Koreans faced poverty and starvation. Our family also was very poor.”

But in the past five decades, the Seoul government has given priority to education and aimed be a world leader in advanced science. It sends its best and brightest to study overseas, but nearly all return home to spread the knowledge they have found. Seoul National University is publicly funded, and Mr. Hwang said that unlike U.S. practice, his team’s salaries are separate from the $2 million it receives solely for research.

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