The Ministry of Health and Welfare has approved an embryonic stem cell research plan submitted by the CHA Medical Group.
 
With the approval, embryonic stem cell research will be resumed in South Korea after seven years since the last study also conducted by a CHA research team in 2009 was fruitless.
 
The ministry gave the go-ahead to the medical group’s plan to use 600 eggs by 2020 to grow stem cell lines with cloned embryos from somatic cells.
 
The hospital aims to develop treatments for incurable afflictions, such as damaged optic nerves, stroke and deformed cartilage, with the stem cell lines.
 
In May, the National Bioethics Committee granted conditional approval to the medical group’s research plan, requiring it to obtain eggs within the legal boundary, operate an internal bioethics committee and come up with a monitoring system to prevent the possible misuse of human cloning.
 
About ten years ago, former Seoul National University Professor Hwang Woo-suk announced that he and his team succeeded in obtaining stem cells from cloned embryos. However, the professor was disgraced in a thesis fabrication scandal, bringing the nation’s stem cell research to a halt.