Patenting officials at the University of Wisconsin at Madison are sharing in the scientific excitement over last week’s announcements by researchers there and at Kyoto University that new techniques had been found to generate versatile stem cells without destroying embryos, even though they acknowledge the discovery could eventually undermine the value of the stem-cell patents and licenses that Wisconsin holds.
“Hey, that’s what science is about,” said Carl E. Gulbrandsen, managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, in an interview last week.