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Nature Medicine 14, 1300 (2008)
doi:10.1038/nm1208-1300a

Australian agency proceeds cautiously with Hwang patent

Simon Grose1

  1. Canberra, Australia

The head of Australia's patent office has admitted to being "uncomfortable" about granting a patent to a group from Seoul National University Industry Foundation that includes the disgraced researcher Woo-Suk Hwang.The patent application is for a stem cell line, which the group of 18 researchers claimed was produced by a procedure known as somatic cell nuclear transfer but has since been revealed to have been created by parthenogenesis (the development of an embryo in the absence of fertilization).