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A leading cardiologist at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston fabricated or falsified data in 31 published studies that should be retracted, officials said.
Dr. Piero Anversa, a cardiologist, published research suggesting that damaged heart muscle could be regenerated with stem cells, a type of cell capable of turning into a variety of other cells.
Although other laboratories have not been able to replicate its findings, this work has led to the creation of new companies to develop new treatments for heart attacks and strokes, and have inspired a huge clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health.
"Some articles may seem alarming, but 31 additional articles are almost unknown," said Benoit Bruneau, deputy director of cardiovascular research at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco. "It's almost complete work, and therefore almost an entire field of research, that is in question."
Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital began their review of Dr. Antwerpa's publications in January 2013. In April 2017, Brigham and Women's Hospital agreed to donate $ 10 million to the government. federal government to resolve charges that Dr. Anversa submitted fraudulent data to enable research. funding.
Officials at Harvard refused to say why it took so long to act on Dr. Antwerpa's published works. Dr. Anversa could not be reached for comment.
The cardiologist became famous in 2001 with a flashy paper claiming that, contrary to scientific consensus, the heart muscle could be regenerated. If that were true, the research would have been of enormous importance to patients around the world.
His method was to collect stem cells from the bone marrow and inject them into the heart. As if by magic, he said, the stem cells turned into heart cells and repaired the damage. The first studies were conducted on mice, but the discovery electrified the researchers.
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Companies have been created, including one led by Dr. Antwerpa, based on the assertion that by injecting stem cells, they could treat hearts damaged by a heart attack.
Yet researchers have not managed to replicate the work. In a paper, Dr.. Irving Weissman, co-director of the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University, and his colleagues concluded that the bone marrow cells injected into the heart remain bone marrow cells.
Another paper, written by Dr. Charles Murry of the University of Washington at Seattle and his colleagues, came to the same conclusion and stated that the failures in the replication of Dr. Antwerpa's work "raise a warning."
But Dr. Antwerpa stood firm. In fact, his response was "you do not know how to do it," said Dr. Bruneau.
"Many labs have said," O.K., game on. We will continue to try to do it, "he added. But the list of chess has increased.
Dr. Anversa claimed to have discovered that bone marrow cells were not needed to repair the heart muscle. The heart has its own stem cells, can be removed, multiply in a petri dish and reinject into the heart to replace and repair damaged cells.
Nobody was able to make these experiments work, said Jeffery D. Molkentin, a professor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Cincinnati Children's Institute.
Dr. Molkentin has found a way to label and trace the stem cell line transformed into cells. This allowed him to determine whether cardiac cells were derived from these stem cells.
The answer was no, and in 2014, he published an article that should have been put forward. All claims claim that stem cells could turn into mature heart cells and repopulate.
A study published in the journal Circulation by Dr. Anversa was withdrawn in 2014 after the coauthors wrote to the journal to say that the data in the document was not data that they had generated. Dr. Antwerpa left Harvard and Brigham and Women's in 2015.
Despite the troubling questions raised about the work on stem cells, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute has launched a clinical trial of stem cells injected for heart failure patients.
The study is still recruiting patients. And there are still companies selling stem cell therapy for damaged hearts.
In recent years, however, skeptical researchers have considered other possibilities for treating the heart. "The field has shrunk a lot," said Dr. Molkentin.
Some scientists have wondered how a line of questionable research has persisted for so long. Dr. Molkentin may have said that the experts were too shy to take a stand.
But what about companies that sell stem cell-based treatments for the heart?
"People wanted to believe," he said.
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