RIKEN takes very seriously the new concerns that have been raised regarding the use of images from Dr. Obokata’s doctoral dissertation in the papers published in Nature, and has launched an investigation. We will ascertain the facts before drawing our conclusions and will issue a report at the appropriate time.

We are also currently investigating the other concerns that have been raised to date, but the investigation is still ongoing and the final report will still take some time.

While the investigations are still in progress, the credibility of the papers have been brought into question, and from the perspective of research ethics, RIKEN is considering the possibility of retracting the two papers published in Nature.

On the afternoon of Friday, March 14, we will hold a press conference in Japanese for registered journalists and issue a press release in English to report on the progress that has been made to date. More information will be provided soon.