Anyone know how legit this is? Sounds a bit too good to be true.
STC claims to have developed 'epoch-making' stem cell treatmentSTC Group Chairman Lee Kye-ho
By Park Si-soo
If Lee Kye-ho's claim turns out to be true, humankind will be freed from Alzheimer's disease and many other incurable diseases in the near future and he will be eulogized as a "hero" who brings the world closer to a state of Utopia.
If Lee's stem cell treatment is proven to be effective without any of side effects ― as he claims ― the 56-year-old biological scientist and chairman of STC Group, a life science company, will amass a huge fortune instantly and put his name on the list of Nobel Prize laureates in medicine sooner or later.
After that, Korea will rise as a global powerhouse in bioengineering and stem cell therapy.
It may sound surreal. Yet Lee said it will become a reality once his newly developed stem cell treatment hits the market.
The treatment in question is STC-nEPS (newly Elicited Pluripotent Stem Cells without side effects by natural compound). He believes this material will make it possible for humans to perfectly reproduce all human organs and miraculously recover damaged ones.
"This is a great scientific breakthrough nobody has achieved ever before," Lee said during a recent interview with The Korea Times at his office in Hannam-dong, central Seoul. "I made it anyway."
He will have the product and related technologies protected by patent in Korea by next month. He will have the same thing done in 146 countries in 13 months.
"Once patented, I will disclose all materials and technology I used to develop STC-nEPS," he said. "With them, scientists around the world will be able to verify whether my claim is true or not. Two weeks would be enough to complete the verification. Do you think I'm talking about something that will turn out to be a lie in two weeks?"
The safety and effectiveness of STC-nEPS was proven by scores of animal experiments at several university-associated labs here, he said. A clinical test has yet to be done, but various experiment records suggest the treatment will have the same safety and effectiveness in human bodies, he said.
The CEO said he had developed STC-nEPS in a simple way that can be emulated easily by bio engineers.
"Brown algae played a key role in developing STC-nEPS," he said. "Brown algae harvested in waters off the southern coast (of the Korean Peninsula) and Jeju Island showed the best performance in producing STC-nEPS. Those harvested in waters off the United States and elsewhere showed less performance."
Lee wants to attract investment of some 200 billion won ($172.5 million) for global patent registration, marketing and construction of mass-production facilities for STC-nEPS in Korea.
