The Pestilence of Pestell

For Better Science wishes to apologise to all of our readers for failing to have properly covered the amazing scientific achievements of the cancer researcher Richard Pestell MB, BS, MD, PhD, FACP, FRACP (Australia), MBA, FRCP (USA), FRACP (London), FRCP (Ireland), FRSB, AO.

The grave omission is now being corrected.

To be fair, Pestell was previously briefly mentioned in June 2023 Shorts. He has around sixty papers on PubPeer.

Australian Superman

Pestell is an Australian native, but went to USA in 1993. He made it to Executive Vice President at Thomas Jefferson University and Director of two NCI cancer centers, the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University and the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University. This Fellow of many Academies has been the Principal Investigator of almost $90 million in grants (primarily NIH), and founded 6 biotechs: EcoGenome, LightSeed (contact: lightseedllc@gmail.com), Shenandoah, StromaGenesis, ioROC (defunct?), ProstaGene (sold in 2018 for $15 million to CytoDyn).

We are also educated about Pestell:

“He is the great-grandson of Albert Green, Minister for Defence under the Scullin Government, son of George Pestell and related to other assorted ancestors.
He was intercollegiate cross country champion, received the HA Craven (best track distance runner), and full blue for athletics (1981) and in 1984, Pestell won the WA State running (5,000 meters track, 10,000 meters road) and walking championships (5,000 m, 20K and 50K).”

Pestell is not just the smartest and fastest but also the sexiest doctor alive and in all of human history. In fact, his totally unbiased, balanced and objective Wikipedia page suggests that wives of US presidents get week knees in his presence.

In 2017, Pestell got bored and tired of all that immense amount of academic power, money and status at Jefferson University and Kimmel Center, and decided to become instead the President of the Pennsylvania Cancer and Regenerative Medicine Research Center of the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute. An impressive-sounding science hub which consists of, as it seems, one single lab, that of Pestell’s. It hosts 5 people including two of Pestell’s former postdocs (now “associate professors”) Xuanmao Jiao and Zhiping Li, who followed him from Kimmel. Maybe because their names are on several problematic papers. Like this study, and note that one of the authors is Pestell’s son Timothy, who is a vet:

Ke Chen , Xuanmao Jiao , Agnese Di Rocco , Duanwen Shen , Shaohua Xu , Adam Ertel , Zuoren Yu , Gabriele Di Sante , Min Wang , Zhiping Li , Timothy G. Pestell , Mathew C. Casimiro , Emmanuel Skordalakes , Samuel Achilefu, Richard G. Pestell Endogenous Cyclin D1 Promotes the Rate of Onset and Magnitude of Mitogenic Signaling via Akt1 Ser473 Phosphorylation Cell Reports (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2020.108151 

In December 2022, Pestell explained on PubPeer that “the negative control were inadvertently pasted in Fig. 1D” and announced a correction. It was published in June 2023, and stated: “This correction to Figure 1D has not changed the original conclusions of the article.“.

There is officially absolutely nothing wrong with this paper from Pestell’s lab, featuring one of his most regular coauthors Chris Albanese, professor and director of the Center for Translational Imaging at Georgetown University:

James Hulit , Chenguang Wang , Zhiping Li , Chris Albanese , Mahadev Rao , Dolores Di Vizio , Salimuddin Shah , Stephen W. Byers , Radma Mahmood , Leonard H. Augenlicht, Robert Russell , Richard G. Pestell Cyclin D1 genetic heterozygosity regulates colonic epithelial cell differentiation and tumor number in ApcMin mice Molecular and Cellular Biology (2004) doi: 10.1128/mcb.24.17.7598-7611.2004 

Pestell explained on PubPeer in May 2023:

“The immunohistochemical staining for b-catenin and Tcf4 from the cyclin D1 -/- are from sequential sections, reflected in the similar but distinct morphology of the colonic epithelial structures […] However, distinguishable locations of the two stains are seen as they are from sequential sections.“

Problem is, such nanometer-thin slices are technically impossible. At least for people who don’t have all these many academic titles and honours behind their names.

The next paper, by Pestell and his regular coauthor Chenguang Wang (now a very obscure associate professor at Jefferson University), was previously corrected in 2013 (“an error in Figure 5A in which duplicate α-Tubulin blots were shown in the panels labelled SET9 (middle panel) and SET9_H297A (right panel)“, and it will need a second correction:

Luke Gaughan, Jacqueline Stockley , Nan Wang , Stuart R.C. McCracken , Achim Treumann , Kelly Armstrong , Fadhel Shaheen , Kate Watt , Iain J. McEwan , Chenguang Wang , Richard G. Pestell, Craig N. Robson Regulation of the androgen receptor by SET9-mediated methylation Nucleic Acids Research (2011) doi: 10.1093/nar/gkq861 

The last author Craig Robson is professor at Newcastle University in UK, where Wang was affiliated at that time, also worth mentioning is that Robson has some more papers on PubPeer in need of action.

Here a Pestell paper with his Columbia University colleague Wei Gu (read about him in the article above) and a certain British ghoul called Neil Perkins, ensconced at Newcastle University in UK (read about him in April 2024 Shorts):

And now Pestell with his mentee and regular coauthor Mathew Casimiro (now assistant professor at Baldwin Agricultural College in Georgia, USA), plus Italian colleagues including

• Claudio Festuccia, University of L’Aquilla associate professor with a massive PubPeer record of fake science,
• Vincenzo Tombolini, professor at Sapienza University of Rome and a close associate of Festuccia’s,
• Eugenio Gaudio, former rector of the Sapienza University of Rome (and now president of the Sapienza Foundation), a close associate of Gianfranco Alpini (who was kicked out from Indiana University).

The study is led by Pestell’s former external PhD student from Italy, Francesco Marampon, now associate professor at the Sapienza University of Rome:

Francesco Marampon , Giovanni Gravina , Xiaoming Ju , Antonella Vetuschi , Roberta Sferra , Mathew C. Casimiro , Simona Pompili , Claudio Festuccia, Alessandro Colapietro , Eugenio Gaudio , Ernesto Di Cesare , Vincenzo Tombolini , Richard G. Pestell Cyclin D1 silencing suppresses tumorigenicity, impairs DNA double strand break repair and thus radiosensitizes androgen-independent prostate cancer cells to DNA damage Oncotarget (2016) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.6579 

Here another collaboration of Pestell’s with Marampon, Casimiro, and with Festuccia’s L’Aquilla colleague Bianca Zani:

Francesco Marampon, Mathew C. Casimiro , Maofu Fu , Michael J. Powell , Vladimir M. Popov , Jaime Lindsay , Bianca M. Zani , Carmela Ciccarelli , Genichi Watanabe , Richard J. Lee , Richard G. Pestell Nerve Growth factor regulation of cyclin D1 in PC12 cells through a p21RAS extracellular signal-regulated kinase pathway requires cooperative interactions between Sp1 and nuclear factor-kappaB Molecular Biology of the Cell (2008) doi: 10.1091/mbc.e06-12-1110 

Another one by Marampon, Zani and Pestell, and Top Italian Scientist Ada Sacchi whose name is also a massive red flag:

Francesco Marampon, Gianluca Bossi, Carmela Ciccarelli, Agnese Di Rocco , Ada Sacchi , Richard G. Pestell , Bianca M. Zani MEK/ERK inhibitor U0126 affects in vitro and in vivo growth of embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma Molecular Cancer Therapeutics (2009) doi: 10.1158/1535-7163.mct-08-0570 

A paper by Pestell, Festuccia, Zani, Tombolini, Marampon, and Pestell’s other former mentee Vladimir Popov, who is now Chief Innovation Officer at Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research in Maryland:

Giovanni Luca Gravina, Francesco Marampon , Margherita Piccolella , Marcella Motta , Luca Ventura , Roberto Pomante , Vladimir M. Popov , Bianca M. Zani , Richard G. Pestell, Vincenzo Tombolini , Emmanuele A. Jannini , Claudio Festuccia Hormonal therapy promotes hormone-resistant phenotype by increasing DNMT activity and expression in prostate cancer models Endocrinology (2011) doi: 10.1210/en.2011-1056 

Another one by this team, on PubPeer since 2013:

Francesco Marampon, Giovanni Luca Gravina , Agnese Di Rocco , Pierluigi Bonfili , Mario Di Staso , Caterina Fardella , Lorella Polidoro , Carmela Ciccarelli, Claudio Festuccia , Vladimir M. Popov , Richard G. Pestell , Vincenzo Tombolini, Bianca Maria Zani MEK/ERK inhibitor U0126 increases the radiosensitivity of rhabdomyosarcoma cells in vitro and in vivo by downregulating growth and DNA repair signals Molecular Cancer Therapeutics (2011) doi: 10.1158/1535-7163.mct-10-0631 

This, from Pestell’s lab, has Popov on board also:

Manran Liu , Xiaoming Ju , Nicole E. Willmarth , Mathew C. Casimiro , John Ojeifo , Toshiyuki Sakamaki , Sanjay Katiyar , Xuanmao Jiao , Vladimir M. Popov , Zuoren Yu , Kongming Wu , David Joyce , Chenguang Wang , Richard G. Pestell Nuclear Factor-κB Enhances ErbB2-Induced Mammary Tumorigenesis and Neoangiogenesis in Vivo American Journal Of Pathology (2009)   doi: 10.2353/ajpath.2009.080706 

Richard and Michael

Pestell collaborated with many questionable people, including MD Anderson’s former President Ronald DePinho. But his most fruitful and long-standing collaboration was with the anti-aging cheater Michael Lisanti (currently at University of Salford in UK), about whom I previously wrote here:

Before going to England, the US-American Lisanti used to be professor at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center which Pestell used to be director of.

Lisanti is Pestell’s most common coauthor, they used to be inseparable. At around 2016/2017, the stream of joint publications fizzled out, incidentally this is also when Pestell decided to leave everything at Johns Hopkins and Kimmel Center for a tiny lab in some private “center”, and when Lisanti ended his endowed professorship at the University of Manchester and moved to the neighbouring yet much less significant University of Salford as “part-time” professor.

As if this couple was caught on doing something naughty and had to face consequences. Maybe Pestell’s and Lisanti’s abysmal research integrity record gives some clues?

Here, a dachshund must have eaten Pestell’s and Lisanti’s original data:

Ke Chen , Kongming Wu , Shaoxin Cai , Wei Zhang , Jie Zhou , Jing Wang , Adam Ertel, Zhiping Li , Hallgeir Rui , Andrew Quong , Michael P Lisanti , Aydin Tozeren , Ceylan Tanes , Sankar Addya, Michael Gormley , Chenguang Wang , Steven B McMahon, Richard G Pestell Dachshund binds p53 to block the growth of lung adenocarcinoma cells Cancer Research (2013) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-12-3191 

The only reasonable explanation for such overlap is: the colony plates are digitally drawn, i.e. made up. The last author and Jefferson University professor Steven McMahon has more bad stuff on PubPeer.

Here another paper by Pestell and Lisanti, again with Pestell’s son:

Here some more of Pestell’s and Lisanti’s joint fabrications, often accompanied by Lisanti’s former postdoc and now wife and fellow professor in Salford, Federica Sotgia:

Am I surprised to see Pestell and Lisanti (and Perkins!) walloping in bed with that litigious Neapolitan Antonio Giordano, President of the Sbarro Pizza Institute at Temple University?

Maofu Fu , Chenguang Wang , Mahadev Rao , Xiaofang Wu , Toula Bouras , Xueping Zhang , Zhiping Li , Xuanmao Jiao , Jianguo Yang , Anping Li , Neil D. Perkins , Bayar Thimmapaya , Andrew L. Kung , Alberto Munoz , Antonio Giordano, Michael P. Lisanti, Richard G. Pestell Cyclin D1 represses p300 transactivation through a cyclin-dependent kinase-independent mechanism Journal of Biological Chemistry (2005) doi: 10.1074/jbc.m503188200

I would be surprised if they didn’t find each other! Especially since Giordano used to be employed at Jefferson University.

Pestell and Lisanti also used to collaborate with a man named Michael Brownlee of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Pestell and Brownlee earned a retraction in 2007. In Cell now less, a journal which never retracts anything unless forced to:

“It has been brought to the authors’ attention by a concerned reader that several of the figure panels in this paper present duplications of the same western blots. These errors were introduced during the revision process, which engendered many new experiments to address the reviewers’ comments and a reorganization of the original figure order. Specifically, panels in Figures 1B, 3B, 6A, 6C, and 6D are affected. Because the published paper contains a number of erroneous panels, the authors are retracting the full paper in the interests of accuracy in the published scientific literature. The authors apologize to the scientific community for any inconvenience these errors may have caused. Based on subsequent unpublished replication of these data by the authors and of the data in the unquestioned published Figures 3E and 3F by the Biomedical Core of the Diabetes Center at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the authors believe that the central conclusion of the paper is correct.”

Retraction (February 2007) for Dachun Yao, Tetsuya Taguchi, Takeshi Matsumura, Richard Pestell, Diane Edelstein, Ida Giardino, Guntram Suske, Naila Ahmed, Paul J. Thornalley, Vijay P. Sarthy, Hans-Peter Hammes, Michael Brownlee Methylglyoxal modification of mSin3A links glycolysis to angiopoietin-2 transcription Cell (2007) doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2007.01.026 

The emeritus professor Brownlee has more naughty stuff on PubPeer, including with Angela Valverde and Manuel Benito (read the article below), and a joint retraction with the sacked fraudster and now full-time papermiller Jun Ren!

New AI tools

Pestell also published many bad papers with another Albert Einstein College of Medicine professor Eliot Rosen, who died in 2019. For example this, a typical Pestellian lazy image reuse:

Maybe you also recognised Chawnshang Chang, recently whitewashed by his University of Rochester? Read January 2022 Shorts and here:

Here Concerns were Expressed, 3 years after Rosen’s death:

Yong Xian Ma , Saijun Fan , Jingbo Xiong , Ren-qi Yuan , Qinghui Meng , Min Gao , Itzhak D Goldberg , Suzanne A Fuqua , Richard G Pestell, Eliot M Rosen Role of BRCA1 in heat shock response Oncogene (2003) doi: 10.1038/sj.onc.1206061 

On 19 September 2024, Oncogene issued this Expression of Concern:

“The Editors-in-Chief would like to alert the readers that concerns have been raised regarding several images presented in this article, namely,

• A portion of the panel shown in row Neo-2, column HEAT of Figure 8a, when re-scaled, seems to overlap with a portion of the panel shown in row wtBRCA1-2, column CON of the same figure.
• The top right corner of the panel shown in row Neo-2, column HEAT of Figure 8b seems to overlap with the bottom left corner of the panel shown in row wtBRCA1-2, column CON of the same figure.
• Gel slices labelled BRCA1 in Figures 2a and 2b seem to be identical.

Readers are therefore advised to interpret these results with caution. […] Richard G. Pestell has informed the Publisher that Elliot M. Rosen has passed away.”

A retraction would have obviously been disrespectful. This, by Rosen and Pestell, is on PubPeer since 2015, unattended:

I wrote to Pestell, and he swiftly replied:

“Dear Dr. Schneider,

Thank you for your email on this important matter.

For the three papers noted by PubPeer,  on which I am the senior author, I have asked the researchers to retrieve and review their original data – (from ~8-10 years ago)- in order to respond in an informed and timely manner.

In this context we have, in the past, when such errors were identified, issued the appropriate rectifying response through the journal.

I have reached out to the senior author on the other papers cited.

Unfortunately, Dr. Rosen passed away in 2019 (https://www.moserfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Eliot-Michael-Rosen?obId=9380184#:~:text=Eliot%20Michael%20Rosen%20Obituary&text=Eliot%20Michael%20Rosen%2C%2068%2C%20of,to%20the%20fight%20against%20cancer.)

These new AI tools are very helpful to see what the eye cannot.

We now subscribe to such AI tools to avoid these types of errors in the future.

Thank you for the vital work you do in this field.

Sincerely,

Richard Pestell”

On the PubPeer list I sent to Pestell, I counted 22 threads with him as last author. Not three. And on many others he can be seen as senior author, being the penultimate one for example. Pestell replied:

“Thank you for drawing to my attention additional PubPeer comments.
I have reached out to the first authors in order to address the questions raised accordingly.
Thank you for the important work you are doing here.”

It is interesting to know Pestell now uses AI software to screen his own papers to avoid getting caught. Presumably he uses Proofig, the image integrity software marketed by its owner Dror Kolodkin-Gal explicitely at scientists like Pestell:

As the final act, do appreciate this other collaboration of Pestell’s, with a bunch of russians:

Marina O. Gomzikova , Margarita N. Zhuravleva , Regina R. Miftakhova , Svetlana S. Arkhipova , Vladimir G. Evtugin , Svetlana F. Khaiboullina , Andrey P. Kiyasov , Jenny L. Persson , Nigel P. Mongan , Richard G. Pestell , Albert A. Rizvanov Cytochalasin B-induced membrane vesicles convey angiogenic activity of parental cells Oncotarget (2017) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.19723 

Pestell continues to publish, not so much as before, but seemingly in his usual mode – with whoever offers to appoint him as senior author. A few weeks ago, his profile page at the Epigenetics Institute at University of Pennsylvania was finally deleted.

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