'Phony' stem cell research scientist to be punished

01 April 2014| last updated at 03:01PM

Riken institute head, Ryoji Noyori, who jointly won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2001, said in a statement he will rigorously punish relevant people after procedures in a disciplinary committee.

The punishment is expected to be meted out to lead researcher Haruko Obokata and her more experienced colleagues.

The move is a huge blow to what was touted as a game-changing discovery, published by 30-year-old Obokata along with other Japanese researchers and a US-based scientist in the January edition of British journal Nature.

The study outlined a relatively simple way to grow transplant tissue in the lab by converting regular adult cells into a kind of stem cell a cell that has the potential to become differentiated into the various specialised cells that make up the brain, heart, kidneys and other organs.

But it faced questions after the respected institute, which sponsored the study, launched an inquiry last month over the credibility of its data.

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'Phony' stem cell research scientist to be punished