Dario Altieri remembers Filippo Giancotti

On 14 July 2023, the great Italian-born US cancer researcher Filippo Giancotti died, only two years after leaving MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas and joining Columbia University in New York as the new director of the Cancer Metastasis Initiative at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC). Giancotti died relatively “young”, probably in his late 60ies. There were obituaries, here is one by his Columbia University, and here is one by another great Italian-born US cancer researcher, Dario Altieri:

Of integrins, signaling, and risotto

“Filippo Giancotti passed away last month in New York City from complications of biliary cancer. Educated as a physician-scientist at the University of Torino, Italy, Filippo had come to America in 1988 to train as a postdoctoral fellow in La Jolla, CA. That’s where I first met him. We were part of a small but boisterous group of Italian postdocs working on both sides of Torrey Pines Road. In essence, we were all the same. Self-starters and passionate about science, we were fundamentally no different from our ancestors coming to America a century earlier. We came by plane instead of a steamer, but we were all eager to leave behind the often tortuous and not always meritocratic academic world back home for something different, maybe even something better. […]

A gifted experimentalist, an innovator, and a cell biologist at heart, Filippo pioneered the role of integrins as multifunctional receptors, serving in intercellular adhesion but also in intercellular communication. He uncovered disparate signaling pathways coordinated by integrin engagement and unraveled profound implications of those pathways in cancer: from the control of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition to modulation of tumor suppressors to acquisition and maintenance of metastatic competence. Published in the top journals for impact, not impact factor, Filippo’s work was innovative, thorough, and definitive. It stood the test of time and became the foundation of more research. It made careers for scores of young scientists who wanted to pursue a similar biology. Making it in integrin research in La Jolla was not easy: the place thought of itself as some sort of world capital of integrinology. Remaining relevant in the same field over the years was even harder. And yet, Filippo’s engine continued to have only one gear: forward. His work led the field for the next three decades, mostly at academic institutions in New York City with a relatively brief stint in Houston. Built over the decades through rigor and resilience, Filippo’s reputation was rock solid. Unassailable. […]

Filippo was a superb scientist. And an equally superb physician. He knew what he had. He knew the statistics. And he knew the sad state of affairs of oncology drug discovery.”

It is always tragic when someone dies of cancer. But here one should not blame the pharma industry on the sad state of oncology drug discovery. After all, the Big Pharma relies on peer reviewed academic discoveries of such Italo-American cancer research titans like Giancotti, Altieri, Carlo Croce, Pier-Paolo Pandolfi…

Maybe worth remembering that Giancotti used to be a collaborator of the legendary Italian fraudster Alfredo Fusco. One of their joint papers was retracted in 2018:

22 years after its publication, the paper was retracted, this was the retraction notice from 2018 (highlights mine):

“The publisher hereby retracts this article. Questions have been raised by concerned readers about the integrity of the data. The American Society for Microbiology has reviewed the figures and confirmed evidence of apparent manipulation and duplication. Since the integrity of the data as presented was compromised, this publication is retracted in its entirety. We apologize to the readers of Molecular and Cellular Biology and regret any inconvenience that this causes. The authors did not agree to this retraction.“

By 2018, everyone working in cancer research knew that Fusco was an utter fraud. And the journal most likely found many more forgeries than the Figure 8. Yet still, the great Giancotti insisted that his paper was perfectly fine and apparently that Fusco was an honest, unfairly maligned researcher.

It was also Giancotti’s own papers which were questioned. Sometimes he issued corrections, grudgingly, and only for problems already discovered. Like here:

Hua Gao , Goutam Chakraborty , Ai Ping Lee-Lim , Qianxing Mo , Markus Decker , Alin Vonica , Ronglai Shen , Edi Brogi , Ali H. Brivanlou , Filippo G. Giancotti The BMP inhibitor Coco reactivates breast cancer cells at lung metastatic sites Cell (2012)   doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2012.06.035 

Also this paper was corrected in 2019:

The 2019 correction notice went:

“In the version of this Article originally published the same blot was inadvertently presented as both p-Rb and Cyclin A in Fig. 2a. This blot corresponds to the p-Rb panel, as can be seen in the unprocessed version of these blots in Supplementary Fig. 9. The corrected version of the panel is shown below, together with a completely uncropped image of both blots. In addition, in the ‘Viral transduction’ section of the Methods, the pLKO.1 plasmids encoding short hairpin RNAs targeting human Rnd1 were incorrectly listed as clones TRCN0000018338 and TRCN0000039977. The correct clone numbers are TRCN0000047434 and TRCN0000047435.”

That should presumably cover for the later discovered gel duplication in Figure 4, Giancotti must have decided:

It seems, Giancotti was never a big fan of issuing corrections, he only issued them when he really had to:

Michael Dans , Laurent Gagnoux-Palacios , Pamela Blaikie , Sharon Klein , Agnese Mariotti , Filippo G. Giancotti Tyrosine phosphorylation of the beta 4 integrin cytoplasmic domain mediates Shc signaling to extracellular signal-regulated kinase and antagonizes formation of hemidesmosomes Journal of Biological Chemistry (2001) doi: 10.1074/jbc.m008663200 

But then again, what’s the point of correction in cases like this:

Sotiris N. Nikolopoulos , Pamela Blaikie , Toshiaki Yoshioka , Wenjun Guo , Claudia Puri , Carlo Tacchetti , Filippo G. Giancotti Targeted deletion of the integrin beta4 signaling domain suppresses laminin-5-dependent nuclear entry of mitogen-activated protein kinases and NF-kappaB, causing defects in epidermal growth and migration Molecular and Cellular Biology (2005)   doi: 10.1128/mcb.25.14.6090-6102.2005 

Anyway, the paper was already corrected for a typo, so it should cover also later discovered image forgeries, no?

And what about Dario Altieri, President and CEO of The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia? Did his cancer research deliver?

Irene Bertolini , Michela Perego , Jagadish C. Ghosh , Andrew V. Kossenkov , Dario C. Altieri NFκB activation by hypoxic small extracellular vesicles drives oncogenic reprogramming in a breast cancer microenvironment Oncogene (2022) doi: 10.1038/s41388-022-02280-3

The freshly published paper was already corrected twice. In January 2023 correction we were informed by the journal:

“A panel of Figure 3 was inadvertently duplicated during the review process. In the originally published manuscript, the Vimentin panel of pXSC treatment after sEVNORM exposure was erroneously duplicated as the Vimentin panel of pXSC treatment after sEVHYP exposure.”

The second correction was issued in June 2023:

“In former Supplementary Fig. 6A, the top left panel was inadvertently mislabeled as “Control” when, in fact, corresponded to sEVHYP-exposed cells treated with the small molecule NFκB inhibitor, pXSC. The correct “Control” panel has now been included in a revised Supplementary Fig. 6A.”

But also Altieri is no fan of publishing corrections. Not even easy ones, for fresh papers:

Irene Bertolini , Jagadish C. Ghosh , Andrew V. Kossenkov , Sudheer Mulugu , Shiv Ram Krishn , Valentina Vaira , Jun Qin , Edward F. Plow , Lucia R. Languino, Dario C. Altieri Small Extracellular Vesicle Regulation of Mitochondrial Dynamics Reprograms a Hypoxic Tumor Microenvironment Developmental Cell (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.devcel.2020.07.014 

This 10 year old papers needs one for sure. Maybe even a retraction:

The treatments may look same, but according to figure legends, those are different cell lines: Figure 2C shows “monolayers of A549 cells” and Figure 2E shows “breast adenocarcinoma MDA-MB231 cells”. Not likely to have been recycled by an honest mistake.

What exactly is the scientific value in this kind of research data?

There is more on PubPeer, for both scientists, the late Giancotti and the live Altieri, and there likely will be even more if someone has a fresh look into their papers. I am not even showing the many inappropriately spliced gels here.

And here is yet another great Italian cancer researcher in USA, Antonio Giordano. This champion of research ethics is apparently trying to sue me in court in Italy:

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