On July 1, the Korea Food and Drug Administration approved a stem cell treatment for acute myocardial infarction developed by FCB-Pharmicell of Seongnam. Locals view the regulatory go-ahead as a world first and also a vote of confidence for the nation's scientific expertise following the cloning scandal that found stem cell scientist Woo Suk Hwang guilty of fraud (Nat. Biotechnol. 24, 745–747, 2006). The treatment, Hearticellgram-AMI, is an autologous stem cell transplant of mesenchymal stem cells, cultured from a patient's own bone marrow, injected into the coronary arteries. The approval comes after six years of clinical trials; as yet, the company has not published results in a peer-reviewed journal. Another major caveat is clinical efficacy: patients showed a 6% improvement in the left ventricular ejection fraction used as measure of heart function six months after one dose of Hearticellgram-AMI. “6% is not terrible. You're getting a modest improvement, and that might be the best they ever do” says University of Michigan cardiologist Mark Russell. For Hearticellgram-AMI, a price tag of 20-million Won ($19,000) may be overly optimistic,” says Russell.