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According to the police, Yoshiki Sasai, a famed biologist and deputy director of the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Japan, hanged himself. Sasai, who was 52 years old, was considered an expert on embryonic stem cells, but his reputation took a serious hit when the lead author of the Nature papers, Haruko Obokata, was accused of scientific misconduct in April. The two scientists worked very closely together on the stem cell papers that described a new, simple way of transforming adult cells into embryonic-style stem cells. Still, he told The Wall Street Journal during that time that he felt overwhelmed with shame. He later penned an apology in which he lamented not being able to identify the errors before the studies were published.