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Fate Therapeutics, MIT Scientist Get Stem Cell Patent

Rudolf Jaenisch, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist, will be granted a U.S. patent for conceiving a way to turn cells from mammalsâ?? bodies into stem cells, a discovery also claimed by two other scientists.

The patent was announced by Fate Therapeutics Inc., a closely held San Diego company that has an exclusive license from MIT and Jaenisch, one of the companyâ??s founders. Shinya Yamanaka, a researcher at Kyoto University in Japan, â??was the first one to do it, we had the idea first,â? Jaenisch said in an interview yesterday. James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin also developed a method for developing stem cells.