Royan Institute

Royan Institute for Reproductive Biomedicine, Stem Cell Biology and Technology  is a leading Iranian biomedical research center involved in stem cell technology and regenerative medicine.

The institute was established in 1991. Its first director was Professor Saeid Kazemi Ashtiani. Since its establishment, the institute have had close collaborations with other leading Iranian research centers as Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics (IBB), NRCGEB, Bone Marrow Transplantation Center at Shariati hospital in Tehran.

The Department of Stem Cells was established in 2002 to establish embryonic stem cell lines and to differentiate them to some different kinds of cells including: Cardiomyocytes, Beta Cells, and Neural Cells.

Royan is a leading stem cell research center in Asia and middle east. Iran has some of the most liberal laws on stem cell research. Royan scientists have claimed to have successfully cloned a sheep and that the sheep is still alive. Foreign observers have been invited to verify the claim.

Scientists working at the Royan Institute have increased their output of publications (national and international) from two (in 1996) to 67 (in 2005). However the number of international publications by Royan scientists is still too low compared to world-class institutions. For instance the number of international papers published till 2007 in the area of stem cell, is only 27 including the papers published in Yakhteh Journal, the institute's own journal. The impact factor of Yakhteh Journal has been estimated to be 0.208. Cell published by Elsevier has an impact factor of 29.431. Yakhteh is a persian word and means "cell".

United States is by far the world’s leader in the total number of stem cell articles published, alone accounting for 42% of all stem cell articles published world-wide between 2000 and 2004. That is four times the articles published by the second leading nation, Germany, which accounted for 10.2 % of all stem articles published worldwide. Germany, by the way, has the most restrictive policies governing hESCR in all Europe, and led other European nations in the number of articles published. A recent evaluation indicates that Israel is the first country in tems of number of stem cell articles published in scientific journals on a per capita basis. Israel has since 1998 published articles on hESC research in peer-reviewed journals, with 42 publications, compared to 128 by scientists in the US, 30 in the UK, 27 in Korea, 16 in China, 15 in Singapore, 13 each in Australia and Sweden, nine in Canada, five in Japan, four in the Netherlands, three each in Germany and Belgium, two each in Denmark and Finland and one each in the Czech Republic, Iran, Spain, Romania, Switzerland and Turkey. All the remaining countries produced no published hESC research at all. Royan Institute is the main stem cell research institute behind Iran's fast progress in this research field.