it irreproducible. Implications If the findings had proven to be valid, stimulus-triggered pluripotency cells could have been generated more easily and efficiently than by existing iPS techniques. And adapted to human tissue, the technique could have led to cheap and simple procedures to create patient-specific stem cells. Stem-cell researcher Dusko Ilic of King's College London called STAP cells "a major scientific discovery that will be opening a new era in stem-cell biology". Shinya Yamanaka, a pioneer of iPS research, called the findings "important to understand nuclear reprogramming ... [and] a new approach to generate iPS-like cells". The idea that STAP cells can form placental tissue meant they could have made cloning considerably easier by bypassing the need for a donor egg and in vitro cultivation. One previous way of creating stem cells has been via genetic manipulation of adult cells into iPS cells. Progress on iPS-based therapies has been slow due to regulatory hurdles surrounding genetic manipulation. Additionally, iPS techniques have an observed efficiency of around 1%, significantly lower than the claimed efficiency of STAP. See also Induced stem cells Muse cell Stem cell controversy Masayuki Yamato References Further reading Update on the STAP cell papers. March 6, 2014 External links STAP HOPE PAGE by Haruko Obokata, March 25, 2016 Stress turns ordinary cells pluripotent News release at RIKEN with videos. Stem cells Induced stem cells Medical controversies Discovery and invention controversies Hoaxes in science Riken 2014 in biotechnology Hoaxes in Japan