A team of researchers has succeeded in isolating and culturing plant stem cells that could be used to produce a popular cancer drug inexpensively and with no harmful by-products.

The development was part of a joint research project between the South Korean biotechnology venture firm “Unhwa” and Britain’s University of Edinburgh.

Unwha said that no other research team in the world has succeeded in separating and culturing innately undifferentiated cambial meristematic cells. The firm said that the cells can be used to produce anticancer drugs and to develop new, high value-added biotechnology materials.

The research results were recently published in the science journal “Nature Biotechnology.”