Trials and Errors of Martin Gleave

Once upon a time there was a NASDAQ-traded biotech company called OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals. It was founded in 1991 by a proper Knight (of the Order of Canada): Martin Gleave, distinguished professor of urology at the University of British Columbia (UBC), founding director of the Vancouver Prostate Centre, academy member, and as UBC celebrates him, “amongst the top cited and funded scientists in Canada, publishing > 600 papers with >60,000 citations, an H-Index of 122, and attracting >$120M in research funding.”

Based on Dr Gleave’s preclinical research, OncoGenex developed siRNA-based cancer drugs. In 2010 it received the BIOTECanada Gold Leaf Award as Biotech Company of the Year Award. By 2017, two OncoGenex products (Custirsen and Apatorsen) were already in phase 3 clinical trial stage. In that year, OncoGenex was sold for an undisclosed sum to the company Achieve Life Sciences, which was at that time described as a “merger”.

Both cancer drugs were based on dodgy preclinical data and they predictably failed in the clinical trials.

Here an archived screenshot of Oncogenex’s pipeline, from 2017:

As it happens, I wrote in last April 2025 Shorts about another UBC cancer researcher, the obstetrics and gynaecology professor Peter Leung, who used to be UBC’s associate dean for medicine and who published lots of dodgy preclinical data on ovarian cancer, as recorded on PubPeer. For reasons of gender equality however, we will now be talking about the prostate now. Incidentally, both Leung’s and Gleave’s papers were largely flagged on PubPeer by pseudonymous sleuth Claire Francis.

Custirsen / OGX-011

The most promising drug was Custirsen or OGX-011, it was based on Gleave’s preclinical studies, licenced from UBC, developed together with the company Isis Pharmaceuticals, but patented by OncoGenex alone in August 2009 after “OncoGenex and Isis amended their OGX-011 agreement to provide OncoGenex with sole rights to OGX-011 and sole responsibility for development and related costs”

A company press release from 2005 described the drug:

“OGX-011 is a second-generation antisense inhibitor of clusterin and represents the first second-generation anticancer antisense drug based on Isis’ proprietary chemistry to enter clinical development. Clusterin is a cell-survival protein that is over-expressed in many cancers and is associated with treatment resistance and poor clinical outcome. In 2004, OncoGenex and Isis reported that OGX-011, in a dose-dependent fashion, achieved effective drug concentration in prostate cancer tissue and produced up to a 91 percent dose-dependent decrease in clusterin expression. […] In preclinical animal studies, OGX-011 improved the potency of traditional chemotherapies by more than 10-fold in prostate cancer with no increase in toxicity. OGX-011 also significantly delayed disease progression in many tumor model systems including in prostate, non-small cell lung, bladder and renal.”

Also the phase 1 clinical trial results were described as very promising by Gleave and colleagues:

Janessa J. Laskin , Garth Nicholas , Christopher Lee , Barbara Gitlitz , Mark Vincent , Yvon Cormier , Joe Stephenson , Yee Ung , Rachel Sanborn , Bryn Pressnail , Francis Nugent , John Nemunaitis , Martin E. Gleave , Nevin Murray , Desiree Hao Phase I/II Trial of Custirsen (OGX-011), an Inhibitor of Clusterin, in Combination with a Gemcitabine and Platinum Regimen in Patients with Previously Untreated Advanced Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Journal of thoracic oncology (2012) doi: 10.1097/jto.0b013e31823f459c  

“Toxicity of the combination was not appreciably different from what is reported for gemcitabine/platinum combinations. Custirsen treatment decreased serum CLU levels in 95% of patients evaluated. Patients who achieved a minimum median CLU level for the population of ≤38 μg/ml during treatment had a median survival of 27.1 compared with 16.1 months for patients who did not (p = 0.02).”

The results of phase 2 clinical study was published already in 2010, OncoGenex owner Gleave was coauthor, the first author Kim Chi is not only UBC professor and Vancouver Prostate Centre researcher, but also Chief Medical Officer & Vice President of Canada’s governmental authority BC Cancer:

Kim N. Chi, Sebastien J. Hotte , Evan Y. Yu , Dongsheng Tu , Bernhard J. Eigl , Ian Tannock , Fred Saad , Scott North , Jean Powers , Martin E. Gleave , Elizabeth A. Eisenhauer Randomized phase II study of docetaxel and prednisone with or without OGX-011 in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer Journal of Clinical Oncology (2010) doi: 10.1200/jco.2009.26.8771 

“Treatment with OGX-011 and docetaxel was well tolerated with evidence of biologic effect and was associated with improved survival.”

It looked great. In August 2010, Gleave and Chi celebrated their breakthrough in Vancouver Sun (archived copy):

““The magnitude was much greater than we had expected or hoped for,” he said. “We were hoping for something in the four-month range. That would have been good enough.” […]

“We see patients who no longer respond to chemotherapy at all and when we give them that same chemotherapy that they are resistant to plus our drug OGX-011, then we see a response,” he said. […]

Dr. Kim Chi, lead author of the study, said at 17 months, 50 per cent of the patients in the control group had died. While in the group that took the OGX-011, 50 per cent of the people died at the 24-month mark. “When you are adding seven more months to someone’s life — that is a lot of time and it is also delaying the bad stuff from happening,” said Chi. “On average it will be seven months but a lot of people do a whole lot better than that.”

Then this phase 3 trial was done:

Kim N Chi , Celestia S Higano , Brent Blumenstein , Jean-Marc Ferrero , James Reeves , Susan Feyerabend , Gwenaelle Gravis , Axel S Merseburger , Arnulf Stenzl , Andries M Bergman , Som D Mukherjee , Pawel Zalewski , Fred Saad , Cindy Jacobs , Martin Gleave , Johann S De Bono Custirsen in combination with docetaxel and prednisone for patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (SYNERGY trial): a phase 3, multicentre, open-label, randomised trial The Lancet. Oncology (2017) doi: 10.1016/s1470-2045(17)30168-7   

OGX-011 failed totally, OncoGenex had to admit in 2014 (highlights mine):

“The combination of custirsen (OGX-011) with docetaxel and prednisone failed to significantly extend survival as a first-line treatment for men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), according to top-line results from the phase III SYNERGY study released by the companies developing the drug, Teva and OncoGenex. […]

“The results of SYNERGY are unexpected, particularly given the wealth of scientific evidence supporting the targeting of clusterin to combat treatment resistance in first-line prostate cancer,” Scott Cormack, president and CEO of OncoGenex, said in a release. “A thorough analysis of the data is underway to understand the potential factors that may have contributed to the results.”

It didn’t get better. In 2017, another OncoGenex-funded phase 3 clinical trial reported another failure for OGX-011. Gleave is not coauthor, but Kim Chi and Oncogenex VP and CMO Cindy Jacobs are:

Tomasz M Beer, Sebastien J Hotte , Fred Saad , Boris Alekseev , Vsevolod Matveev , Aude Fléchon , Gwenaelle Gravis , Florence Joly , Kim N Chi , Zafar Malik , Brent Blumenstein , Patricia S Stewart , Cindy A Jacobs , Karim Fizazi Custirsen (OGX-011) combined with cabazitaxel and prednisone versus cabazitaxel and prednisone alone in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer previously treated with docetaxel (AFFINITY): a randomised, open-label, international, phase 3 trial The Lancet Oncology (2017) doi: 10.1016/s1470-2045(17)30605-8 

“We noted no survival benefit in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer with the addition of custirsen to cabazitaxel and prednisone treatment.”

Was this failure really that unexpected as OncoGenex CEO claimed? Let’s look into Gleave’s preclinical data on OGC-011.

Starting with this falsified OGX-011 gel:

Alan So , Shannon Sinnemann , David Huntsman , Ladan Fazli , Martin Gleave Knockdown of the cytoprotective chaperone, clusterin, chemosensitizes human breast cancer cells both in vitro and in vivo Molecular Cancer Therapeutics (2005) – doi: 10.1158/1535-7163.mct-05-0178   

Years later, renal carcinoma was solved with OGX-011:

Y Kususda , H Miyake , M E Gleave , M Fujisawa Clusterin inhibition using OGX-011 synergistically enhances antitumour activity of sorafenib in a human renal cell carcinoma model British Journal of Cancer (2012) doi: 10.1038/bjc.2012.209 

This was resolved with an Expression of Concern on 3 December 2024, because unfortunately “original data are no longer available for validation due to the age of the article.”

Here another OGX-011 study, by Gleave and his Vancouver Prostate Centre colleague Paul Rennie:

Amina Zoubeidi, Susan Ettinger , Eliana Beraldi, Boris Hadaschik , Anousheh Zardan , Leo W J Klomp , Colleen C Nelson , Paul S Rennie , Martin E Gleave Clusterin facilitates COMMD1 and I-kappaB degradation to enhance NF-kappaB activity in prostate cancer cells Molecular cancer research (2010) doi: 10.1158/1541-7786.mcr-09-0277 

Do pay attention to the first author Amina Zoubeidi, then Gleave’s postdoc. She progressed to become UBC professor, member of the Executive Board of Gleave’s Vancouver Prostate Centre, and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, celebrated as role model for women in science, “a champion for the next generation of scientists” and “an example of the impact of philanthropy”. A shining star!

Zobeidi published many papers with Gleave, but as a tiny detour, here are some without her patron, one from her PhD time at McGill University in Montreal, another as group leader at UBC in Vancouver, with Kim Chi the trial hero:

Gleave must have known that OGX-011 failed in phase 2 trial, but he kept pushing it as therapy for prostate cancer. Here he is with Zoubeidi again:

Hiroaki Matsumoto , Yoshiaki Yamamoto , Masaki Shiota , Hidetoshi Kuruma , Eliana Beraldi , Hideyasu Matsuyama , Amina Zoubeidi , Martin Gleave Cotargeting Androgen Receptor and Clusterin Delays Castrate-Resistant Prostate Cancer Progression by Inhibiting Adaptive Stress Response and AR Stability Cancer Research (2013) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-13-0359 

Again, Gleave and Zoubeidi:

Fan Zhang , Masafumi Kumano , Eliana Beraldi , Ladan Fazli , Caigan Du, Susan Moore, Poul Sorensen, Amina Zoubeidi, Martin E. Gleave Clusterin facilitates stress-induced lipidation of LC3 and autophagosome biogenesis to enhance cancer cell survival Nature Communications (2014) doi: 10.1038/ncomms6775 

And another one by Gleave and Zoubeidi, with a celebrity coauthor from pharma industry:

Francois Lamoureux, Christian Thomas, Min-Jean Yin , Hidetoshi Kuruma , Eliana Beraldi, Ladan Fazli , Amina Zoubeidi , Martin E. Gleave Clusterin Inhibition Using OGX-011 Synergistically Enhances Hsp90 Inhibitor Activity by Suppressing the Heat Shock Response in Castrate-Resistant Prostate Cancer Cancer Research (2011) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-11-0994 

Did you maybe recognise Min-Jean Yin, senior principal scientist at Pfizer until she was sacked for fraud? Well, Elisabeth Bik exposed her fake science and I reported it in May 2016. Other news outlets picked up the story when 5 retractions were announced, more retractions came later.

Apatorsen / OGX-427

Which brings us to that 2014 paper in European Urology, by the same set of authors, which recycles data from Lamoureux et al 2011 above, and which Gleave corrected in the wake of the Yin scandal. In fact, Gleave even told Retraction Watch in October 2016: “Because the error was correctable and did not alter the interpretation of that particular figure or the over results in any way, we did not feel it necessary to retract the paper.”

It is about the other promising OncoGenex drug, Apatorsen or OGX-427:

François Lamoureux , Christian Thomas , Min-Jean Yin , Ladan Fazli , Amina Zoubeidi , Martin E. Gleave Suppression of heat shock protein 27 using OGX-427 induces endoplasmic reticulum stress and potentiates heat shock protein 90 inhibitors to delay castrate-resistant prostate cancer European Urology (2014) doi: 10.1016/j.eururo.2013.12.019 

Will this fake study be retracted now, what with the new evidence above? I wouldn’t bet on it. Too many international big names at stake,a s you will soon see.

Anyway, here some more of preclinical research with OGX-427:

Masayuki Kamada , Alan So , Mototsugu Muramaki , Palma Rocchi , Eliana Beraldi , Martin Gleave Hsp27 knockdown using nucleotide-based therapies inhibit tumor growth and enhance chemotherapy in human bladder cancer cells Molecular Cancer Therapeutics (2007) doi: 10.1158/1535-7163.mct-06-0417 

Alan So (who already proved the amazing efficacy of OGX-011) made it to UBC professor and leads the Clinical Trials Unit at Gleave’s Vancouver Prostate Cancer. You can judge the quality of So’s preclinical research by his paper with Gleave, Han et al 2015. So was also the lead author on Gleave’s study announcing another Oncogenex drug, the IGFR inhibitor OGX-225, in So et al 2008. OGX-225 never went into clinical trials, but helped Oncogenex raise millions in stock sales.

Here are Gleave and So again, proving the magic of OGX-427, maybe you will recognise a certain French co-author:

C Andrieu , D Taieb , V Baylot , S Ettinger , P Soubeyran , A De-Thonel , C Nelson , C Garrido , A So , L Fazli , F Bladou , M Gleave , J L Iovanna , P Rocchi Heat shock protein 27 confers resistance to androgen ablation and chemotherapy in prostate cancer cells through eIF4E Oncogene (2010) doi: 10.1038/onc.2009.479 

On top of everything, OncoGenex owner Gleave lied in that paper about his COI:

“The authors declare no conflict of interest.”

No problem, nobody cares. On 10 April 2025, an Editorial Expression of Concern closed the matter:

“The Editors-in-Chief would like to alert the readers that concerns have been raised about some of the blots presented in this article. Specifically,

• Fig. 2b anti-4E-BP1 lanes 5 and 6 appear highly similar to Fig. 6b anti-4E-BP1 lanes 4 and 3 (blot flipped horizontally and stretched differently).
• Fig. 6a anti-eIF4E IB lanes 3 and 4 appear highly similar.

Readers are therefore advised to interpret these results with caution.

A. So, M. Gleave, and P. Rocchi agree with this Editorial Expression of Concern.”

Now, that certain French coauthor is Carmen Garrido, research director of Exceptional Class at INSERM in Dijon. She recently caused Gleave his only retraction, on a HSP27 related topic, another coauthor was Eric Solary, research director at the Gustave Roussy Institute in Paris (see October 2024 Shorts about him and Garrido):

Dominique Thuringer , Gaetan Jego , Guillaume Wettstein , Olivier Terrier , Laurent Cronier , Nadhir Yousfi , Sophie Hébrard , André Bouchot , Adonis Hazoumé , Anne‐Laure Joly , Martin Gleave , Manuel Rosa-Calatrava , Eric Solary , Carmen Garrido Extracellular HSP27 mediates angiogenesis through Toll‐like receptor 3 The FASEB Journal (2013) doi: 10.1096/fj.12-226977 

The retraction arrived on 8 February 2025:

“The retraction has been agreed upon following an investigation into concerns raised by a third party which revealed inappropriate image panel duplications between this (Figure 3A) and another article published previously in a different scientific context. The investigation also revealed that the western blot panels of Figure 4E were later reused in a publication of the same author group, depicting different experimental conditions. Due to the number and the level of errors identified in the published figures, the authors and the editors have lost confidence in the presented data and consider the conclusions substantially compromised.”

But let’s return to OGX-427. Did you miss Zoubeidi already?

Barbara Lelj-Garolla , Masafumi Kumano , Eliana Beraldi , Lucia Nappi , Palma Rocchi , Diana N Ionescu , Ladan Fazli , Amina Zoubeidi , Martin E Gleave Hsp27 Inhibition with OGX-427 Sensitizes Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Cells to Erlotinib and Chemotherapy Molecular Cancer Therapeutics (2015) doi: 10.1158/1535-7163.mct-14-0866 

Here is this Vancouver power couple at work again:

Amina Zoubeidi , Anousheh Zardan , Romina M Wiedmann , Jennifer Locke , Eliana Beraldi , Ladan Fazli , Martin E Gleave Hsp27 promotes insulin-like growth factor-I survival signaling in prostate cancer via p90Rsk-dependent phosphorylation and inactivation of BAD Cancer Research (2010) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-09-3252 

This, by Gleave and his trusted soulmate Zoubeidi, was corrected:

N Hayashi , J W Peacock , E Beraldi , A Zoubeidi , M E Gleave, C J Ong Hsp27 silencing coordinately inhibits proliferation and promotes Fas-induced apoptosis by regulating the PEA-15 molecular switch Cell Death and Differentiation (2012) doi: 10.1038/cdd.2011.184 

The Correction from 17 March 2025 informed us that “the incorrect vinculin blot was inadvertently included in Figure 2B during manuscript preparation“, but luckily, “the correction does not alter the interpretation of the figure or the conclusions of the study.”

Emboldened by preclinical data, Gleave tested OGX-427 in phase 1 dose-escalation clinical trial:

K.N. Chi , E.Y. Yu , C. Jacobs , J. Bazov , C. Kollmannsberger , C.S. Higano , S.D. Mukherjee , M.E. Gleave , P.S. Stewart , S.J. Hotte A phase I dose-escalation study of apatorsen (OGX-427), an antisense inhibitor targeting heat shock protein 27 (Hsp27), in patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer and other advanced cancers Annals of oncology (2016) doi: 10.1093/annonc/mdw068 

“One patient experienced a dose-limiting toxicity at the 600 mg dose level (intracranial hemorrhage in a previously undiagnosed brain metastasis).”

It was decided to continue. Actually, the phase 2 clinical trial of OGX-427 against pancreatic cancer failed already in 2015, as the company admitted in a press release (highlight mine):

“OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:OGXI) announced today initial results from the Phase 2 Rainier™ study evaluating apatorsen in combination with ABRAXANE® (paclitaxel protein-bound particles for injectable suspension) (albumin-bound) and gemcitabine compared to ABRAXANE and gemcitabine alone in patients with untreated metastatic pancreatic cancer. The addition of apatorsen to ABRAXANE and gemcitabine did not demonstrate a survival benefit compared to ABRAXANE and gemcitabine alone. […]

“While we are disappointed with the Rainier results, we also recognize the challenges associated with developing effective treatments for such a lethal and complex disease. We remain confident in our broader apatorsen program, which includes ongoing Phase 2 clinical trials in lung, prostate and bladder cancers,” said Scott Cormack, President and CEO of OncoGenex.

Results from an exploratory analysis of the Phase 2 Borealis-1™ trial showed that patients with metastatic bladder cancer with poor prognostic features experienced a reduction in risk of death with the addition of 600 mg apatorsen added to first-line chemotherapy, compared to chemotherapy alone.”

It seems, the results from either Rainier or Borealis-1 trials were never published, at least I can’t find anything and Gleave is not replying to emails. But the Borealis-2 phase 2 clinical trial with OGX-427 against bladder cancer was reported by OncoGenex in a 2013 conference abstract. In October 2016, OncoGenex issued this press release:

“OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: OGXI) announced today positive survival results from the final analysis of the Phase 2 Borealis-2™ trial of apatorsen in combination with docetaxel treatment that enrolled 200 patients with metastatic bladder cancer whose disease had progressed following first-line platinum-based chemotherapy. Patients who received apatorsen treatment experienced a 20% reduction in risk of death, compared to patients receiving docetaxel alone […]
The company’s lead compound, apatorsen (OGX-427), is designed to inhibit production of Hsp27, disable cancer cells’ defenses and overcome treatment resistance.”

Here is the Borealis-2 result:

Jonathan E. Rosenberg , Noah M. Hahn , Meredith M. Regan , Lillian Werner , Ajjai Alva , Saby George , Joel Picus , Robert Alter , Arjun Balar , Jean Hoffman-Censits , Petros Grivas , Richard Lauer , Elizabeth A. Guancial , Christopher Hoimes , Guru Sonpavde , Constantine Albany , Mark N. Stein , Tim Breen , Cindy Jacobs , Kirsten Anderson , Joaquim Bellmunt, Aly-Khan A. Lalani, Sumanta Pal, Toni K. Choueiri Apatorsen plus docetaxel versus docetaxel alone in platinum-resistant metastatic urothelial carcinoma (Borealis-2) British Journal of Cancer (2018) doi: 10.1038/s41416-018-0087-9 

“Patients randomised to [apatorsen/docetaxel] (n = 99) had improved [overall survival] compared to docetaxel alone (n = 101): HR: 0.80, 80% CI: 0.65-0.98, P = 0.0784”

In certain circles, a p-value of 0.078 is considered to be significant and “a 20% reduction in risk of death“. OGX-427 failed also in another phase 2 clinical study, against non-small cell lung cancer. It was called SPRUCE Trial:

David R Spigel, Dianna L Shipley , David M Waterhouse , Suzanne F Jones , Patrick J Ward , Kent C Shih , Brian Hemphill , Michael McCleod , Robert C Whorf , Ray D Page , Joseph Stilwill , Tarek Mekhail , Cindy Jacobs , Howard A Burris , John D Hainsworth A Randomized, Double-Blinded, Phase II Trial of Carboplatin and Pemetrexed with or without Apatorsen (OGX-427) in Patients with Previously Untreated Stage IV Non-Squamous-Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer: The SPRUCE Trial The Oncologist (2019) doi: 10.1634/theoncologist.2018-0518 

“The addition of apatorsen to carboplatin and pemetrexed was well tolerated but did not improve outcomes in patients with metastatic nonsquamous NSCLC cancer in the first-line setting.”

Gleave is currently in no danger of ever facing any consequences. You saw his successful corrections and the occasional concerns editors expressed for his professional success.

A whole pipeline

In 2019 and 2020, long after OncoGenex’s drugs failed and the company was dumped, UBC celebrated Gleave and Zoubeidi as geniuses of medicine:

““We now have more tools in our toolbox,” Gleave says. “At the VPC we have a whole pipeline of potential high-value drugs. By working with industry we can move these discoveries into treatments that will make a difference for patients and their families.””

Sure they have a whole pipeline, several of them. Here are Gleave and Zoubeidi again with the pharma fraudster Min-Jean Yin, because Pfizer wanted to test some HSP90 inhibitors:

Francois Lamoureux , Christian Thomas , Min-Jean Yin , Hidetoshi Kuruma , Ladan Fazli , Martin E Gleave , Amina Zoubeidi A novel HSP90 inhibitor delays castrate-resistant prostate cancer without altering serum PSA levels and inhibits osteoclastogenesis Clinical Cancer Research (2011) doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.ccr-10-3077 

In that paper, Gleave insisted to have no conflicts of interests whatseover, despite OncoGenex being in HSP inhibitor business and despite stating in Zoubeidi et al 2010 to have been consulting for Sanofi-Aventis and Astra-Zeneca and receiving research support from these two companies, and rather relevant: also from Pfizer.

Same team, this time Gleave and Zoudbeidi admit to have received each a grant from AstraZeneca, and in return they proved that the company’s drug helps against prostate cancer:

Christian Thomas, Francois Lamoureux , Claire Crafter , Barry R. Davies , Eliana Beraldi , Ladan Fazli , Soojin Kim , Daksh Thaper , Martin E. Gleave, Amina Zoubeidi Synergistic Targeting of PI3K/AKT Pathway and Androgen Receptor Axis Significantly Delays Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer ProgressionIn Vivo Molecular Cancer Therapeutics (2013) doi: 10.1158/1535-7163.mct-13-0032 

The two lead authors and Gleave’s mentees did very well, not despite but because all those dodgy studies they published with Gleave and Zoubeidi. Francois Lamoureux is now back in France as principal investigator at INSERM Institut national de la santé.

Gleave’s mentee from Germany, Christian Thomas, made it even bigger. He is since 2019 head of the urology clinic at the Technical University of Dresden. The national funder, the German Research Council (DFG), assessed Thomas’s professorial status versus the obvious facts in his DFG-funded paper, and decreed:

“we were able to identify sufficient DFG-funding for publication Mol Cancer Ther (2013) 12 (11): 2342–2355. However, the necessary initial suspicion could not be established.”

Please understand that DFG has an unwritten internal rule that a full professor can never be investigated to avoid finding him responsible. No paper by Thomas is in danger of being retracted.

Here is this same team again, testing another AstraZeneca drug. Despite his grant from this company admitted in the paper above, Gleave lied here that he had “No potential conflicts of interest“:

Francois Lamoureux , Christian Thomas , Claire Crafter , Masafumi Kumano , Fan Zhang , Barry R. Davies , Martin E. Gleave , Amina Zoubeidi Blocked Autophagy Using Lysosomotropic Agents Sensitizes Resistant Prostate Tumor Cells to the Novel Akt Inhibitor AZD5363 Clinical Cancer Research (2013) doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.ccr-12-3114 

There is of course more on PubPeer for Gleave, a total of over 40 papers.

I have another German professor for you, Dieter Wolf of Technical University Munich, with additional professorships in China:

Chih-Cheng Yang , Ladan Fazli , Salvatore Loguercio , Irina Zharkikh , Pedro Aza-Blanc , Martin E. Gleave , Dieter A. Wolf Downregulation of c-SRC kinase CSK promotes castration resistant prostate cancer and pinpoints a novel disease subclass Oncotarget (2015) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.4279 

In the Correction from 12 February 2025, Wolf confirmed “an accidental duplicate” and provided “original, unmodified raw data for this experiment“, with data stamp even. Of course, “this correction does not affect the results or conclusions of the paper.”

Here are two more papers by Gleave, Zoubeidi and their colleagues at Vancouver Prostate Centre:

• Dong Lin , Xin Dong , Kendric Wang , Alexander W. Wyatt , Francesco Crea , Hui Xue , Yuwei Wang , Rebecca Wu , Robert H. Bell , Anne Haegert , Sonal Brahmbhatt , Antonio Hurtado-Coll , Peter W. Gout , Ladan Fazli , Martin E. Gleave , Colin C. Collins , Yuzhuo Wang Identification of DEK as a potential therapeutic target for neuroendocrine prostate cancer Oncotarget (2015) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.2809 
• Shusuke Akamatsu , Alexander W. Wyatt , Dong Lin , Summer Lysakowski , Fan Zhang , Soojin Kim , Charan Tse , Kendric Wang , Fan Mo , Anne Haegert , Sonal Brahmbhatt , Robert Bell , Hans Adomat , Yoshihisa Kawai , Hui Xue , Xin Dong , Ladan Fazli , Harrison Tsai , Tamara L. Lotan , Myriam Kossai , Juan Miguel Mosquera, Mark A. Rubin, Himisha Beltran, Amina Zoubeidi, Yuzhuo Wang, Martin E. Gleave, Colin C. Collins The Placental Gene PEG10 Promotes Progression of Neuroendocrine Prostate Cancer Cell Reports (2015) doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2015.07.012 

The Vancouver Prostatian Colin Collins replied on PubPeer with: “We apologize for these inadvertent errors. They have now been corrected.” The Erratum from 22 April 2025 stated that it was an “accidental duplication“, and so “the authors have provided alternative representative images“. Basically, they admitted that the original data was not available, and of course:

“Importantly, these corrections do not impact any experimental results or the conclusions of the study.”

Here are Collins and another Vancouver Prostatian, Yuzhuo Wang, recylcing data from an earlier paper they published with Gleave:

• Dong Lin , Alexander W. Wyatt , Hui Xue , Yuwei Wang , Xin Dong , Anne Haegert , Rebecca Wu , Sonal Brahmbhatt , Fan Mo , Lina Jong , Robert H. Bell , Shawn Anderson , Antonio Hurtado-Coll , Ladan Fazli , Manju Sharma , Himisha Beltran , Mark Rubin , Michael Cox , Peter W. Gout , James Morris , Larry Goldenberg, Stanislav V. Volik, Martin E. Gleave, Colin C. Collins, Yuzhuo Wang High Fidelity Patient-Derived Xenografts for Accelerating Prostate Cancer Discovery and Drug Development Cancer Research (2014) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-13-2921-t 
• Pier-Luc Clermont , Dong Lin , Francesco Crea , Rebecca Wu , Hui Xue , Yuwei Wang , Kelsie L Thu , Wan L Lam , Colin C Collins , Yuzhuo Wang , Cheryl D Helgason Polycomb-mediated silencing in neuroendocrine prostate cancer Clinical Epigenetics (2015) doi: 10.1186/s13148-015-0074-4  

More by the Vancouver Prostatians, with Xuesen Dong blocking the rear:

Liangliang Liu , Ning Xie, Paul Rennie, John R G Challis , Martin Gleave , Stephen J Lye, Xuesen Dong Consensus PP1 binding motifs regulate transcriptional corepression and alternative RNA splicing activities of the steroid receptor coregulators, p54nrb and PSF Molecular Endocrinology (2011) doi: 10.1210/me.2010-0517 

That was corrected twice already. The 18 December 2024 Correction lamented that “top two images in Figure 3D […] were inadvertent duplicates of the top two images in Figure 3F” which however “does not imply any changes to the scientific conclusions in the article“. The Correction from 11 April 2025 added that “in Figure 9C, Western blots […] were inadvertently misassembled” but luckily that also “does not change any scientific conclusions of the study.” The dishonest conflict of interests statement (“The authors have nothing to disclose“), was of course not corrected.

Also appreciate the dodgy gels in Gleave & Dong’s Yu et al 2014 and Li et al 2016 , or this, with colleagues at University of Maryland:

Songhui Xu , Lingling Fan , Hee-Young Jeon , Fengbo Zhang , Xiaolu Cui , McKayla B. Mickle , Guihong Peng , Arif Hussain , Ladan Fazli , Martin E. Gleave , Xuesen Dong , Jianfei Qi p300-Mediated Acetylation of Histone Demethylase JMJD1A Prevents Its Degradation by Ubiquitin Ligase STUB1 and Enhances Its Activity in Prostate Cancer Cancer Research (2020) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-20-0233 

Another recent one by the Vancouver Prostatians, with Gleave in the unsual position as first author. Did he make that figure then?

Martin E. Gleave , Yoshihisa Kawai , Kenjiro Imada , Shusuke Akamatsu , Fan Zhang , Roland Seiler, Tetsutaro Hayashi , Jeffrey Leong , Eliana Beraldi , Neetu Saxena , Alexander Kretschmer, Htoo Zarni Oo , Alberto Contreras-Sanz , Hideyasu Matsuyama, Dong Lin, Ladan Fazli , Colin C. Collins, Alexander W. Wyatt, Peter C Black Paternally Expressed Gene 10 (PEG10) Promotes Growth, Invasion, and Survival of Bladder Cancer Molecular Cancer Therapeutics (2020) doi: 10.1158/1535-7163.mct-19-1031 

One would think Gleave as Director of Vancouver Prostate Centre would be held responsible for what goes on there. But he won’t. And this fish stinks from its head.

UBC knows about problems with Gleave’s preclinical research at least since September 2024, after I notified them of his PubPeer record. Almost a month later, in October 2024, I received this reply from the responsible official Sophia Frangou, President’s Excellence Chair in Brain Health and Associate Dean for Research at UBC Faculty of Medicine:

“Dear Mr. Schneider
I have no knowledge of the issues you mentioned regarding Dr Gleave so I am unable to assist you.
Typically, inquires by journalists are handled by our Media Relations Team. Details here: https://communications.ubc.ca/media-relations/“

Nobody ever replied to me ever again.

As it happens, in 2020 UBC’s Vice-President for Research & Innovation Gail Murphy prevented a journal from retracting a fraudulent paper coauthored by the UBC gynaecologist Peter Leung (see April 2025 Shorts). This was even publicly documented in a permanent Expression of Concern. Murphy is VP for Research also today.

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