Hwang Woo Suk claimed an advance involving cloned human embryos. (Photo: AP)

    BEIJIIGN, Dec.16 (Xinhuanet) -- A Korean scientist who pioneered in human cloning study has confessed that he fabricated much of the data for his landmark research into embryonic stem (ES) cells, one of his close collaborators said yesterday to the Korean television station MBC.

    Woo Suk Hwang has admitted to faking key parts of a study that purported to show the creation of the first human master cells, tailor-made to match individual patients, according to Sung Il Roh, a senior colleague at Professor Hwang's laboratory in Seoul, South Korea.

    Dr Sung said that 9 of the 11 colonies of stem cells featured in the study had not been authentic. The validity of the other two is still uncertain.

    Dr. Sung said that Professor Hwang had confessed to flaws in the study when he visited him Thursday in hospital, where the scientist is being hospitalized d for exhaustion. 

    Early this year, Professor Woo Suk Hwang claimed in his paper, published on the journal Science, that he had generated cloned ES cells that carried the DNA of people suffering from conditions such as Parkinson¡¯s disease and diabetes. Such cells could potentially be transplanted into these patients to replace diseased tissue without risk of rejection.

    This process, sometimes known as ¡°therapeutic cloning¡±, was thought to be one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of the year.

    Concerns about the validity of the work, however, began to surface last month. One of the co-authors, Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh Tuesday askedScience to remove his name from the paper while urging Professor Hwang to retract it.

    Professor Hwang and his Korean research team have agreed to retract their paper from the Science. Enditem

Related: Science paper accused of fabrication

    (Agencies)