Schneider Shorts 25.04.2025 – I applaud what you have done for better science

Schneider Shorts of 25 April 2025 – a Canadian gynaecologist examines himself, a perpetrator trolls a Science Guardian, with Italian retractions, special rules for special people, and finally, do coffee and chocolate belong in the lab?

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Science Elites

I applaud what you have done for better science and research integrity globally

Meet the gynaecologist Peter Leung, professor for reproductive and molecular endocrinology and former Associate Dean at the Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia in Canada. He is also Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and recipient of various awards. We are told:

“Dr. Leung has received worldwide recognition for discovering and categorizing the human gene encoding the genadotrophin-releasing hormone receptor (GnRH), which is a key regulator of reproduction.”

Like these two, published 4 years apart. The experiments seem to be the same, but they are not. The first study used GnRH-II at 100 nmol/L, the later one at 1 μM.

• Hsien-Ming Wu , Jung-Chien Cheng , Hsin-Shih Wang , Hong-Yuan Huang , Colin D. MacCalman , Peter C.K. Leung Gonadotropin-releasing hormone type II induces apoptosis of human endometrial cancer cells by activating GADD45alpha Cancer Research (2009) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-08-4591 
• Hsien-Ming Wu , Hsin-Shih Wang , Hong-Yuan Huang , Chyong-Huey Lai , Chyi-Long Lee , Yung-Kuei Soong , Peter Ck Leung Gonadotropin-releasing hormone type II (GnRH-II) agonist regulates the invasiveness of endometrial cancer cells through the GnRH-I receptor and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)-dependent activation of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2 BMC Cancer (2013) doi: 10.1186/1471-2407-13-300 

I’M not sure this kind of science deserves worldwide recognition:

Song Ling Poon , Gareth T. Hammond , Peter C. K. LeungEpidermal growth factor-induced GnRH-II synthesis contributes to ovarian cancer cell invasion Molecular endocrinology (2009) doi: 10.1210/me.2009-0147 

Song Ling Poon, now a pharma executive, is also co-responsible for other bad papers from Leung’s lab, like Poon et al 2011 and Lin et al 2009. More GnRH magic:

Jian Guo , Andrew V Schally , Marta Zarandi , Jozsef Varga , Peter C K Leung Antiproliferative effect of growth hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH) antagonist on ovarian cancer cells through the EGFR-Akt pathway Reproductive biology and endocrinology (2010) doi: 10.1186/1477-7827-8-54 

Leung published hundreds of research papers, around 25 have now been flagged on PubPeer by the pseudonymous sleuth Claire Francis. Here another one:

Hsun-Ming Chang , Jung-Chien Cheng , Elizabeth Taylor , Peter C.K. Leung Oocyte-derived BMP15 but not GDF9 down-regulates connexin43 expression and decreases gap junction intercellular communication activity in immortalized human granulosa cells Molecular Human Reproduction (2014) doi: 10.1093/molehr/gau001

Some blots from that 2014 paper were reused 6 years later for another study from Leung’s lab and for different experiments:

Jiamin Xie , Hua Zhu , Hsun-Ming Chang , Christian Klausen , Minyue Dong , Peter C. K. Leung GDF8 Promotes the Cell Invasiveness in Human Trophoblasts by Upregulating the Expression of Follistatin-Like 3 Through the ALK5-SMAD2/3 Signaling Pathway Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology (2020) doi: 10.3389/fcell.2020.573781 

The two common authors are Leung and his lab member Hsun-Ming Chang. Here they are again, struggling with loading controls and microscopy images:

However, the only common name on the many papers on PubPeer, is Leung’s.

Jiadi Wen , Hua Zhu , Peter C.K. Leung Gonadal steroids regulate the expression of aggrecanases in human endometrial stromal cells in vitro Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine (2013) doi: 10.1111/jcmm.12110 

Whom to blame for this recycling?

• Siyuan Xiong , Christian Klausen , Jung-Chien Cheng , Hua Zhu , Peter C.K. Leung Activin B induces human endometrial cancer cell adhesion, migration and invasion by up-regulating integrin β3 via SMAD2/3 signaling Oncotarget (2015) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.5229 
• Siyuan Xiong , Jung-Chien Cheng , Christian Klausen , Jianfang Zhao , Peter C.K. Leung TGF-β1 stimulates migration of type II endometrial cancer cells by down-regulating PTEN via activation of SMAD and ERK1/2 signaling pathways Oncotarget (2016) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.11311 

Ironically, some data from that dodgy 2016 Oncotarget paper was later stolen and recycled by an unrelated group of Chinese authors in Zhong et al 2019.

Quite possibly Leung owes his career to UBC’s ob-gyn professor Nelly Auersperg, who died in 2023 aged 94. Well, that’s how he honoured her:

And here are Auersperg, Leung, and a US colleague, Gordon Mills of Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University (mentioned in April 2025 Shorts). The paper was flagged on PubPeer already in 2016:

Arezoo Astanehe , David Arenillas , Wyeth W. Wasserman , Peter C. K. Leung , Sandra E. Dunn , Barry R. Davies , Gordon B. Mills, Nelly Auersperg Mechanisms underlying p53 regulation of PIK3CA transcription in ovarian surface epithelium and in ovarian cancer Journal of Cell Science (2008) doi: 10.1242/jcs.013029 

The case was closed in September 2020 with a permanent Expression of Concern, which is both honest and insane:

“A reader informed the journal that there were several potential issues with the blots in this paper, which were also highlighted on the PubPeer website. […]

Journal of Cell Science contacted Dr Auersperg, the corresponding author, to request the original blots, but unfortunately the blots were no longer available. As is our standard practice in such cases, without the original full blots to support the results shown in these figures, the journal referred the matter to the Vice-President, Research and Innovation at The University of British Columbia (UBC), asking them to provide further information and a recommendation as to the next steps.

As part of the case summary provided to UBC, the journal included a visual demonstration of the similarities between the blots in question using the open-source software ‘Forensically’. It is important to note that the software was not used to detect similarities between blots, but rather to highlight them.

UBC contacted the journal upon conclusion of its investigation and stated that no misconduct had occurred. The journal requested the report to understand how the committee arrived at this conclusion, stating that we would have expected the report to comment on the soundness of the conclusions in the paper. UBC provided the report, which showed that the committee had focused its investigation on the use of the Forensically software tool. The report concluded that “…there is no basis for concluding that the blots in question were duplicated or improperly altered.” Their recommendation was: “Care should be taken whenever a report of duplication has resulted from analysis using the current version of the Forensically software.” Furthermore, UBC stated: “It is not the University’s place to comment on [the soundness and trustworthiness of the data] – we leave those determinations to the expertise of peer reviewers, editorial boards and the academic community more generally.”

The journal clarified that Forensically was not used to detect any potential duplications, and reiterated its expectations that an institutional investigation would indeed comment on the validity of the data, highlighting relevant sections from the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) website; Journal of Cell Science and its publisher, The Company of Biologists, are members of COPE. The journal requested that UBC conduct a more-detailed investigation into the issues raised about this paper, but UBC declined.

The journal therefore referred the matter to an external expert, requesting an opinion on the soundness of the conclusions of the paper by Astanahe et al., considering that the blots in question are unreliable. Our expert advisor expressed the opinion that the conclusions are possibly still sound, noting two additional papers published subsequently that report results similar to those of the paper in question.

The journal also contacted all of the co-authors of the paper, and although there was some initial correspondence, further attempts to communicate with them went unanswered.

The journal is therefore publishing this Expression of Concern to make readers aware of these issues and our efforts to resolve them.”

Utterly unsurprisingly, when the sleuth Claire Francis tried to report the newly found problems with Leung’s papers to UBC, he received this strange reply from the UBC’s Interim Executive Director at Vice-President Research & Innovation Portfolio, Heather Frost:

“Dear Ms. Francis, Thank you for your email. If you are considering submitting a scholarly integrity allegation, please follow the procedures described in UBC’s scholarly integrity policy:

The file actually describes Frost’s duties in handling the notification she already received… I then wrote to her and to Leung, the latter swiftly replied:

“We are currently reviewing the concerns raised regarding the study results in our publications. As part of this process, we are making every effort to retrieve the original raw data to verify and address the issues. Given the time that has passed since the majority of the studies were conducted, accessing and reviewing the archived data is taking longer than anticipated.  We remain committed to upholding the highest standards of scientific integrity and transparency, and will cooperate fully with the journals to determine the appropriate course of action.
I applaud what you have done for better science and research integrity globally.“

Frost announced to me to comment on all that, but then didn’t.

(note: Frost’s rather confusing job description was corrected after publication)

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An anointed czar with racist motives

Elisabeth Bik is trolling Science Guardians.

In a blog post from 18 April 2025, Bik wrote:

“On Twitter/X, @SciGuardians, associated with the website ScienceGuardians.com, is promising to ‘uncover’ some big conspiracy of fraudulent @pubpeer.com users.
But in reality, the account appears to be run by one or more disgruntled scientists with dozens of problematic papers. And there is no big reveal.”

We know for sure of one person behind Science Guardians website and social media, who is likely also the owner: Wafik El-Deiry, Director of Legorreta Cancer Center at Brown University, newly appointed Editor-in-Chief of Oncotarget, and a possible future director of National cancer Institute (NCI):

Bik continues:

“ScienceGuardians.com presents as a ‘Journal Club’ where people can comment on scientific papers using anonymous accounts. Very similar to PubPeer, actually. […] The ScienceGuardians website also features some training and resources, with flowcharts that resemble those used by COPE, the Committee on Publication Ethics. One flowchart covers the ethical reuse of figures and tables, another the addition of authors during the revision stage of submitted articles. […]

Dr. El-Deiry has published over 1,000 articles, […] He also has earned nearly 70 comments on PubPeer. They cover the usual range of duplicated and overlapping images. For a summary of the concerns raised on his papers, you can read this post on ForBetterScience. […]

The SciGuardians X-account appears to be doing precisely what El-Deiry claims to despise. It anonymously tries to smear the reputation of PubPeer commenters, by making all kinds of false accusations.

It follows the classical DARVO pattern, a term coined by Dr. Jennifer Freyd that stands for “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.””

In a post on X (archived version here), SciGuardians attacked several sleuths and yours truly, who is the “Perpetrator 4” (Bik became “Perpetrator 5”):

Bik then wondered who else may have joined El-Deiry in his Science Guardians project:

“On April 11, SciGuardians tweeted about the ‘Coordinated Attacks on the Scientific Community‘ by PubPeer users who criticized papers by Dr. Sabine Hazan and Professor Jörg Rinklebe, […]

The style of SciGuardians’ tweets reminds me of those by Matt Nachtrab, who relentlessly harassed me after I criticized papers related to his beloved $SAVA company – and who lost $50 million by ignoring our repeated warnings. […]

In an interesting detail, Matt was so angry with our PubPeer comments that he started CureGuardian.org – a name uncannily similar to ScienceGuardians.com. Might they be related? “

The German professor Jörg Rinklebe is no stranger to papermills and to For Better Science readers, also the US covidiot Sabine Hazan was ridiculed there very early on (see July 2021 Shorts).

And then Bik did something really funny. She signed up to the Science Guardians website using her old Stanford email account. This is the result, El-Deiry’s papers are now flagged not only on PubPeer but also on Science Guardians.

Here is one example:

Here is the original PubPeer thread, by Elisabeth Bik:

Peiwen Fei, Wenge Wang, Seok-hyun Kim, Shulin Wang, Timothy F Burns, Joanna K Sax, Monica Buzzai, David T Dicker, W Gillies McKenna, Eric J Bernhard, Wafik S El-Deiry Bnip3L is induced by p53 under hypoxia, and its knockdown promotes tumor growth Cancer Cell (2004) doi: 10.1016/j.ccr.2004.10.012 

The other SEVENTY PubPeer threads for El-Deiry’s papers are similar. He replied there and elsewhere with this letter:

El-Deiry of course started to complain on social media about Bik’s defacing of his pristine platform. To none other but Trump’s Secretary of Disease and Human Suffering, Robert F Kennedy Jr:

On top of everything, El-Deiry also believes to be a victim of racism by “an anointed czar with possible political or racist motives“:

El-Deiry then announced an announcement, but then gave up. Instead, he pleaded with publishers and institutions to apprehend us:

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Scholarly Publishing

After conferring with Dr. Eckert

What do you do with an officially fraudulent paper by an officially condemned and sacked fraudster? You correct it of course.

Richard Eckert used to be Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at University of Maryland and Deputy Director of Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center in USA, until he was found guilty of fraud in 2020, then kicked out and publicly exposed in an HHS-ORI announcement in August 2024, with an 8 year ban from applying for funding or acting as reviewer (see August 2024 Shorts and the investigative report published by Retraction Watch).

There is a lot of fake stuff on PubPeer, flagged by anonymous PubPeer users in 2022, some already corrected. And now one of the eight Eckert’s papers which were ordered to “be corrected or retracted“, was corrected:

Gautam Adhikary , Yap Ching Chew , E Albert Reece , Richard L. Eckert PKC-delta and -eta, MEKK-1, MEK-6, MEK-3, and p38-delta are essential mediators of the response of normal human epidermal keratinocytes to differentiating agents Journal of Investigative Dermatology (2010) doi: 10.1038/jid.2010.108 

And now, the Correction issued by Elsevier on 19 April 2025 (highlights mine):

“The University of Maryland, Baltimore and the US National Institutes of Health Office of Research Integrity have investigated the work reported in this article (Adhikary et al, 2010) and have informed the journal of their findings. Both recommended correction or retraction of the article and concluded that it is compromised. Specifically, according to the ORI, “In Figure 7b of J Invest Dermatol. 2010, the bands in the upper panel, representing expression of MEKK1 and its β-Actin control, are falsified and/or fabricated by reusing and relabeling the bands in the middle panel, representing expression of MEK6 and its β-actin control in the same figure.”

When attending to this issue, the Editor also noted discrepancies in Figures 1a and 2a described in PubPeer (https://pubpeer.com/publications/2839F623A194CBAACD04B9767DE5F8).

After conferring with Dr. Eckert, the Editor has agreed to publish a correction, as detailed below.

Dr. Eckert has stated that the corrections do not change the outcome of the experiments or the conclusions of the published article.”

The correction then informs us that the blots in Fig 1 “are legitimately used as controls “, that “Incorrect ‘junB (Nuclear)’ and ‘c-fos (Nuclear)’ images were mistakenly presented in Fig. 2A“, that Fig 2B and C were appropriately manipulated “to facilitate discussion” so that the “middle lane in Fig. 2B is legitimately repeated“, and that in Fig 7 “incorrect” blots “were mistakenly presented“.

Why this criminally insane correction? Well, the clue is that the Editor-in-Chief, the Austrian professor Erwin Tschachler, did some “conferring with Dr. Eckert“. Maybe the two rich white men found some common values and interests. The irony is:

“Tschachler told Retraction Watch he had also been contacted by the US National Institutes of Health Office of Research Integrity, and said the journal would pursue retractions for the articles “given the pattern of misconduct.” 

Rest assured Tschachler will soon pursue corrections instead of retractions here also:

Ling Zhu , Chaya Brodie , Sivaprakasam Balasubramanian , Richard L. Eckert Multiple PKCdelta tyrosine residues are required for PKCdelta-dependent activation of involucrin expression–a key role of PKCdelta-Y311 The Journal of investigative dermatology (2008) doi: 10.1038/sj.jid.5701103 

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The reproducibility is validated and corroborated

Another correction for important white Americans. The Harvard professor Amy Wagers seems to be untouchable no matter what she does, quite possibly because she is protected by her Stanford mentor Irv Weissman. Read here:

Well, they now corrected this paper, which was already corrected in January 2003 because “incorrect versions of Figures 1f and 4g were supplied“:

Miriam Merad , Markus G. Manz , Holger Karsunky , Amy Wagers , Wendy Peters , Israel Charo , Irving L. Weissman , Jason G. Cyster , Edgar G. Engleman Langerhans cells renew in the skin throughout life under steady-state conditions Nature Immunology (2002) doi: 10.1038/ni852 

Because another correction could have affected the conclusions, an Addendum was published instead, on 4 April 2025:

“Concerning the original publication, the authors acknowledge and apologize for possible inadvertent errors that may have occurred during the assembly of PCR measurements for β-actin expression in Langerhans cells and monocytes, as well as CCL2/7 expression in UV-irradiated skin. Unfortunately, the original data were generated over 22 years ago and are no longer available. However, Langerhans cells and monocytes express β-actin and the reproducibility of UV-induced CCL2 and CCL7 expression is validated through immunohistochemistry (Fig. 6b in original article) and corroborated by multiple independent studies in mice and human.”

Yeah, Piero Anversa‘s fraudulent heart stem cells were also reproduced and validated by countless independent studies. Sometimes science is magical.

To be fair, a retraction for Merad et al was out of the question, and not just because of Wagers or Weissmann. The first author Miram Merad is Dean for Translational Research and Director of Lipschultz Precision Immunology Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. The last author and Stanford professor Ed Engleman is founder and medical director of Stanford Blood Center, and immunology program co-director at Stanford Cancer Institute. These people are GODS.

Let’s praise them a bit more:

M Merad, L Fong, J Bogenberger , E G Engleman Differentiation of myeloid dendritic cells into CD8alpha-positive dendritic cells in vivo Blood (2000) doi: 10.1182/blood.V96.5.1865

No, these people are in no way threatened by the purges and defunding of science which Trump regime now perpetrates. Quite the opposite, they will get all that money now liberated from the sacked honest scientists.

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Unusual changes

A clearly papermilled publication was saved with an Expression of Concern. It was initially flagged on PubPeer because the authors from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Egypt claimed to be the original discoverers of Alzheimer’s Disease from 1906. The key name here is Gaber El-Saber Batiha, who is possibly the owner of the papermill and has a huge PubPeer record.

Naif H. Ali , Hayder M. Al-kuraishy , Ali I. Al-Gareeb , Saud A. Alnaaim , Athanasios Alexiou , Marios Papadakis , Hebatallah M. Saad, Gaber El-Saber Batiha The probable role of tissue plasminogen activator/neuroserpin axis in Alzheimer’s disease: a new perspective Acta Neurologica Belgica (2023) doi: 10.1007/s13760-023-02403-x 

On 1 March 2025, an Expression of Concern was issued (highlight mine):

“The Editor-in-Chief is issuing an Editorial Expression of Concern to alert readers that this article underwent unusual changes to the authorship list during the submission process. Readers are advised to interpret the contributions of the authors to this article with caution.

Naif H. Ali, Hayder M. Al-kuraishy, Ali I. Al-Gareeb, and Gaber El-Saber Batiha disagree with this Editorial Expression of Concern. The remaining authors did not respond to correspondence from the Publisher about this Editorial Expression of Concern.”

Obviously the study is generated by papermill and all authorships were bought. Maybe what prevented the retractions was the presence of two European authors: Athanasios Alexiou and Marios Papadakis. The former is a bioinformatician with stated affiliations in with an dodgy foundation in Australia and a company in Austria, Papadakis is a plastic surgeon who declared as affiliation the University Hospital Witten-Herdecke in Germany, but in reality he left it in 2019 and is currently employed in a private clinic in Greece. Both these Greek men are known papermillers and often publish together, on whatever topic is on offer, with Alexiou being a much bigger fish in the papermill pond (see PubPeer records for Alexiou and for Papadakis). Quite often their coauthors are El-Saber Batiha and Hayder Al-Kuraishy (PubPeer record). Alexiou also published with Abhijit Dey:

Here a retracted paper by Alexiou and El-Saber Batiha, it was peer-reviewed by the Romanian papermiller and Batiha’s associate Simona Cavalu:

Deepshi Arora , Shailendra Bhatt , Manish Kumar , Ravinder Verma , Yugam Taneja , Nikita Kaushal , Abhishek Tiwari , Varsha Tiwari , Athanasios Alexiou , Sarah Albogami , Saqer S Alotaibi , Vineet Mittal , Rajeev K Singla , Deepak Kaushik , Gaber El-Saber Batiha QbD-based rivastigmine tartrate-loaded solid lipid nanoparticles for enhanced intranasal delivery to the brain for Alzheimer’s therapeutics Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience (2022) doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2022.960246 

On 28 March 2024, this Frontiers paper was retracted because “the publisher found evidence of peer review manipulation.”

Yet the paper in the Springer journal Acta Neurologica Belgica was not retracted. The publisher is also dragging its feet for already a whole a year over two papermill products from Iran which Alexander Magazinov reported to them in early May 2024:

• Mohammadarian Akbari , Mahdi Gholipour , Hedyeh Davoudikianersi , Bashdar Mahmud Hussen , Atefe Abak , Solat Eslami , Soudeh Ghafouri-Fard, Arezou Sayad Expression of NF-κB-associated lncRNAs in different types of migraine. Acta Neurol Belg (2023). doi: 10.1007/s13760-022-02071-3
• Mohammad Taheri , Reyhaneh Eghtedarian , Solat Eslami , Bashdar Mahmud Hussen , Soudeh Ghafouri-Fard, Seyed Abdulmajid Ayatollahi Alteration in the expression of long non-coding RNAs in the circulation of migraineurs. Acta Neurol Belg (2024). doi: 10.1007/s13760-024-02513-0

Maybe because of celebrity authors Mohammad Taheri (Germany affiliated!) and Soudeh Ghafouri-Fard (Iranian government-connected)?

The Alexiou case is closed, but about the Iranians Magazinov was just informed by the Springer executive Patricia Wiley that the investigation was ongoing.

They can act though, at least on Ukrainian papermills selling to russian nobodies.

Gulnar K. Taitubayeva, Irina A. Gribacheva , Sholpan A. Bulekbayeva , Zholtay R. Daribayev , Ekaterina V. Petrova Autonomic dysfunction syndrome in pregnant women Acta Neurologica Belgica (2021) doi: 10.1007/s13760-020-01312-7 

Now, this one was retracted on 3 October 2023:

“The Editor in Chief has retracted this paper. After publication, an investigation by the publisher resulted in concerns about attempts to manipulate peer review and unverifiable authorship. Additionally, the authors were unable to provide evidence that ethics approval had been obtained prior to the commencement of this study. “

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Retraction Watchdogging

But the authors did not respond

Two retractions for the Italian cheaters Francesco Amenta of University of Camerino and Roberto Avola of University of Catania. Read about them here:

Both retracted papers originally appeared in the same Wiley-published journal. Retracted paper Nr 1, flagged on PubPeer in 2022-2023:

Vincenzo Bramanti, Sonia Grasso , Daniele Tibullo, Cesarina Giallongo, Rita Pappa , Maria Violetta Brundo, Daniele Tomassoni, Maria Viola , Francesco Amenta, Roberto Avola Neuroactive molecules and growth factors modulate cytoskeletal protein expression during astroglial cell proliferation and differentiation in culture Journal of Neuroscience Research (2016) doi: 10.1002/jnr.23678 

The retraction arrived on 22 April 2025.

” Following publication, concerns were raised by a third party that portions of Figures 2B and 3 were duplicated and manipulated, and that most of the images from Figure 2A were duplicated and manipulated from an earlier publication by this research group. Internal investigation confirmed these claims. The publisher attempted to contact the authors and request original data, but the authors did not respond. The retraction has been agreed because of concerns that the images were manipulated, affecting the interpretation of the data and results presented. The authors have been notified of the retraction.”

Retracted paper Nr 2, on PubPeer since 2022:

A. Campisi, V. Bramanti, D. Caccamo, G. Li Volti , G. Cannavò , M. Currò , G. Raciti , F. Galvano, F. Amenta , A. Vanella , R. Ientile, R. Avola Effect of growth factors and steroids on transglutaminase activity and expression in primary astroglial cell cultures Journal of Neuroscience Research (2008) doi: 10.1002/jnr.21579 

Here the retraction from 22 April 2025:

“Following publication, concerns were raised by a third party that portions of Figures 1 and 8 were duplicated and manipulated, and that portions of Figure 8 were duplicated from an earlier publication by this research group. Internal investigation confirmed these claims. The publisher attempted to contact the authors and request original data, but the authors did not respond. The retraction has been agreed because of concerns that the images were manipulated, affecting the interpretation of the data and results presented. The authors have been notified of the retraction.”

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Industry Giants

Shocked by the taste

In early 2020, the Israeli biotech Pluristem and its founder Yaki Yanay were ready to cure COVID-19 with patented PLX “stem cells” from human placenta, and they received permission from Israeli authorities and US FDA to treat patients. Several COVID-19 sufferers in Israel and USA received Pluristem’s placenta cell therapy by April 2020, the “100% survival rate” was celebrated by Jerusalem Post. Read here:

That was such a tremendous pandemic game-changer that a few days later nobody ever spoke about it again, and the Charite university hospital in Berlin very quietly backed out of the much-touted collaboration with Pluristem.

5 years passed. Pluristem is now called just Pluri, placenta went out of the window, possibly literally. Because they are making lab-grown coffee now!

Yes, you read right. Coffee. Once again, Jerusalem Post celebrated in January 2024:

“The Israeli biotech company Pluri has developed a transformative cell-based coffee that can be grown without causing environmental harm.

The coffee is produced using Pluri’s 3D cell expansion technology as part of its “PluriAgtech” business vertical that the company says aims to create more eco-friendly alternatives to traditional farming methods. […]

The coffee industry faces several issues, Pluri CEO Yaky Yanay explained. […]

Now, the company extracts cells from the coffee plant and grows them in its bioreactor system. Pluri has complete control of the process and profile.

When the cells leave the bioreactor, they look like instant coffee. Consumers can add boiled water and drink.

“I was shocked by the taste,” Yanay admitted. “It tastes just like coffee.”

He said the first cups tasted like a Cafe Americano or traditional drip coffee. However, he said that the platform should be able to produce all kinds of coffee types and flavors.”

None of that makes any sense, and of course Yanay is taking the piss.

In January 2025, Pluri announced to have raised $6.5 million in investment from the biotech entrepreneur Alejandro Weinstein, who then joined the company’s board. Pluri also announced to buy 71% of the cocoa company Kokomodo, so expect to hear of Pluri’s lab-grown chocolate next and how much Yanay couldn’t distinguish it from the real thing.

Probably because of Weinstein’s money doing the taking, Nature Biotechnology celebrated Pluri and their competitors in a March 2025 article (which Pluri accompanied with a press release). And who are we to argue with Nature:

“Lior Raviv, Pluri’s chief technical officer, says: “We hypothesized we could take the cells from the plant and put them in a bioreactor [to grow coffee].” Through their work in cell therapy and cultivated meat, the Pluri team knew that not all cells like the same growing conditions.
Taking plant cell samples, they made cell lines and, instead of growing them swirling around in suspension culture, they used a packed-bed bioreactor.
The coffee cells slowly flow through, taking on a tissue-like structure. The cells are fed salts and vitamins, and their natural metabolism then takes over to produce secondary metabolites such as caffeine. The resulting biomass, which forms as small clumps, is dried and gently roasted. The final product looks
and tastes like ground coffee. Pluri is now focusing on scaling
up and seeking regulatory approvals.”

Nature also informs us that two other companies pursue the same business model: Stem in Paris, France (described in 2023 as “Founded last year by specialist coffee roaster and wholesaler Tom Clark (CMO); biotech IP specialist Henri Kunz (chairman); and analytical chemist Dr. Chahan Yeretzian (CEO/CSO)“, web domain now defunct), and California Cultured in USA (which markets lab grown stuff, and “not as an alternative“, but as “the future of chocolate and coffee“).

I guess if Trump succeeds in sacking all sane and decent scientists, this indecent insanity will start making sense to those who remain?

Also, Pluri didn’t give up on their past stem cell business. As Jerusalem Post mentioned last year, Yanay is also growing organs for transplantations and sausages for consumption, probably all in the same bioreactor:

“Pluri, formerly known as Pluristem Therapeutics, has boldly entered the food technology market over the past two years. Yanay said it has now proved that its bioreactor platform can effectively grow human, animal, and plant cells to scale.
Last year, the company announced the launch of Ever After Foods, a partnership with Tnuva, which uses Pluri’s platform to transform cells into cultivated meat products for the mass market.”

The lab-grown meat market seems to be overrun by bullshitters and science cheaters. Like Ali Khademhosseini:

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