Sumitran-Holgersson and Olausson to retract 8 papers for research misconduct

Bad news for regenerative medicine enthusiasts, the data manipulating biologist Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson and her surgeon partner Michael Olausson, both professors at the University of Gothenburg (GU) in Sweden. They were previously found guilty of breach of medical ethics and patient abuse for their experiments with “regenerated” decellurised veins, which incidentally serve as basis for an EU-funded clinical trial currently prepared by the Gothenburg-based company VeriGraft (founded by Sumitran-Holgersson and her husband Jan Holgersson, also a GU professor, read here). There was even a trachea transplant: that patient died very soon after, the paper later retracted for data manipulation and absent ethics vote. It was a decellurised cadaveric graft by method very similar to that of Paolo Macchiarini. Another tracheal graft was prepared for one of Macchiarini’s patients at Karolinska Institutet (KI) after her plastic trachea failed, but it was sent back unused. Because of such expertise in misconduct and medical ethics breach, Olausson and his GU colleague Hasse Ejnell served as experts who helped Swedish prosecutor drop manslaughter charges against Macchiarini (read all that here).

Now that Sumitran-Holgersson’s research funding was withdrawn, with the new decision by the Expert Group at the Swedish Central Ethical Review Board (CEPN) she becomes even more of a liability for GU: eight out of her ten analysed papers with Olausson are set for retraction, due to data manipulation by the corresponding author Sumitran-Holgersson (while all her co-authors were made co-responsible to various degrees). I reported the evidence before, on my site, after my readers notified me and posted it on PubPeer. The 2012 paper in The Lancet describing a regenerated vein transplant was however not earmarked for retraction, despite that among other things it contained a fake ethics vote (see my earlier reporting), which the journal The Lancet couldn’t care less about.

The original misconduct report was written for GU in September 2017 by the external investigator Ole Didrik Laerum, medicine professor at University of Bergen in Norway, who was appointed exactly one year before that. Sumitran-Holgersson didn’t like his results and demanded from CEPN a revision by the Expert Group on Research Misconduct, in which she was supported by her GU colleague Kristoffer Hellstrand. This now proved to be her big mistake, because what Sumitran-Holgersson et al got now, was findings of research misconduct and instructions for retractions. The Swedish original of CEPN Expert Group report is available here, (Update 21.03.2018: English version here), these are its findings: Continue reading “Sumitran-Holgersson and Olausson to retract 8 papers for research misconduct” →

Indestructible Sumitran-Holgersson: Commit misconduct on patients, get EU funding to continue

This is a story uncovered and researched with the tremendous help of Swedish investigative journalist, Sophia Tibblin. A Swedish start-up company, fed with generous funding from Swedish state, now received €2.2 Million from the European Union, to further develop the same regenerative medicine technology which was determined in two investigations to be tainted by research misconduct and patient abuse by the founder of this very company: Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson. A clinical trial is scheduled based on debunked science of recellurising dead blood vessel grafts, to continue where 3 previous child patients were used as human Guinea pigs .

This might remind you of another ongoing Horizon 2020 clinical trial, where a similar decell-recell technology of the trachea transplanter Paolo Macchiarini is being prepared for mass-use in patients. There, EU refused to share any information. Also in the case of Sumitran-Holgersson and her company, all EU commission members and even press speakers I approached refused any communication.

Much credit for research behind this post goes to Sophia Tibblin.

Continue reading “Indestructible Sumitran-Holgersson: Commit misconduct on patients, get EU funding to continue” →

Swedish police investigation acquitted Macchiarini on advice of misconduct-tainted trachea transplanters

On October 12th 2017, the Swedish prosecutor Jennie Nordin gave a long-awaited press conference about the case of the scandal surgeon Paolo Macchiarini. The surprise hardly anyone expected was: all manslaughter charges were dropped, the case closed. The operations on three patients, whom Macchiarini gave a plastic trachea at the hospital of the Karolinska Institutet (KI), and who died as the result, were declared mere negligence. Andemariam Beyene, Chris Lyles and Yesim Cetir (details of their cases here) were considered as dying anyway and without any other possibility to help, in fact the prosecution decreed that there was no way to prove if they would have lived longer had Macchiarini not experimented on them without ethics permits or any previous animal testing.

While Sweden and the world listened in disbelief at the words of Nordin, everyone wondered how could the police investigators come to such radically different conclusion about the medical aspects of these trachea transplant operations than the experts in Sweden and worldwide, who clearly see Macchiarini’s trachea transplants as unethical human experimenting and misconduct (see here). The prosecution refused to divulge which experts advised them though, also their assessments remain confidential. Now, thanks to KI’s emeritus professor and whistleblower Johan Thyberg, I found out what the Chairman of the Judicial Council Camilla Olsson, and her rapporteur Robert Grundin wrote to the prosecution:

“The Board has obtained the opinion of Professor Hasse Ejnell and Professor Michael Olausson”

Update 27.10.2017: Prosecutor Nordin confirmed to Thyberg by email that the experts appointed by the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) were indeed Hasse Ejnell and Michael Olausson.

These are the two clinical professors from the University of Gothenburg who themselves transplanted a cadaveric trachea, without obtaining a proper ethics vote or an approval of authorities on the treatment and its medication. The patient died soon afterwards and the publication describing that operation (Berg et al, Tissue Eng Part A. 2014) was retracted for data manipulations. The scientist behind this was the notorious Gothenburg regenerative medicine researcher Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson. She and Olausson were both found guilty of misconduct and ethics breach by the University of Gothenburg, regarding that trachea transplantation as well as transplants of “regenerated” veins into three child patients.

On top of this, Olausson was involved into the case of Yesim Cetir, Macchiarini’s third patient. Unlike previous two patients Yesim had no slow-growing or any kind of cancer, all she had was a tracheostomy due to damaged trachea after a botched operation in her home country Turkey. With such a defect alone, she was in no life danger at all, as long as she did not try to swim. It was Macchiarini who declared her in his recent television interview as “bleeding a glass of blood” daily, or the Swedish prosecution claiming she was suffering of “life-threatening” chest infection, without explaining how this can be cured with a plastic trachea transplant. Olausson, who helped the prosecution form this diagnosis, has made together with Sumitran-Holgersson a cadaveric trachea which was supposed to save Yesim’s life after her first plastic trachea transplant failed. Macchiarini’s acolyte Philipp Jungebluth (the one who keeps suing me in court in Germany) travelled to Gothenburg to pick up that trachea in 2013. Macchiarini then changed his mind, sent Olausson his necro-trachea back and implanted another plastic graft into Yesim. Which wade matters even worse, Yesim died in March of this year in the hospital of the Temple University, USA. Her father Hayrullah, who dedicated all his time and attention to trying to save her, died soon after Yesim, on untreated cancer.

Continue reading “Swedish police investigation acquitted Macchiarini on advice of misconduct-tainted trachea transplanters” →

Sumitran-Holgersson and Olausson guilty of misconduct and unethical experiments on children

Game over apparently near for the indestructible Swedish regenerative medicine researcher Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson, after investigations at her University of Gothenburg draw to an end. It is about experimental transplants of decellurised veins “regenerated” with the patient’s own bone marrow cells into three child patients, all of whom ended up in life-long medical care, one patient received a liver transplant after her graft failed, another child suffered severe complications (see this earlier report about an external investigation by Bengt Gerdin into that matter). The University of Gothenburg then established an investigative committee, which followed up on the Gerdin report and specific concerns voiced by a journal editor and a colleague. I publish below the two decisions which revealed that Sumitran-Holgersson and her surgeon partner Michael Olausson never performed any animal testing before recruiting their human patients, they also failed to obtain ethics permits for these operations. Instead the two lied in their publications (Olausson et al, Lancet, 2012; Olausson et al EBioMedicine, 2014) about having obtained ethics votes (something I already uncovered before). During the investigation, Olausson and Sumitran-Holgersson were caught submitting false information to the committee. They were now found guilty of misconduct and ethics breach in both these publications. Continue reading “Sumitran-Holgersson and Olausson guilty of misconduct and unethical experiments on children” →

Mild criticism only for Sumitran-Holgersson and Olausson from Gothenburg University Hospital investigation

The indestructible Swedish regenerative medicine researcher Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson could have been stopped early on, and a patient of hers could have been alive still. The former professor at the Karolinska Institutet (KI) was caught faking data in 2009. A paper had to be retracted as consequence (Elsheikh et al, Blood, 2005) , but in 2011 the entire external investigation and its results was declared nil and void by the Swedish Research Council Vetenskapsrådet (VR) which had originally commissioned it. The reasons used back then were rather incomprehensible, it boiled down to the accusations against the two investigators themselves, of having found research misconduct where they were not supposed to find research misconduct (for details, see my earlier report). To top it off, all frozen funding of this cheater professor was reinstituted and the University of Gothenburg together with its Sahlgrenska University Hospital welcomed Sumitran-Holgersson as a “genius”. There, at the Department of Surgery at the Sahlgrenska Academy she established a hub of regenerative medicine, helped by her husband Jan Holgersson (whose company had been threatening his wife’s investigators, silently condoned by VR), and by the head surgeon Michael Olausson. Together, Sumitran-Holgersson and Olausson produced a string of regenerative medicine papers of which the University of Gothenburg and Sahlgrenska used to be very proud. Maybe less so these days, since a rich evidence of fresh data manipulations surfaced on PubPeer several months ago (see examples here). Meanwhile, part of Sumitran-Holgersson’s tremendous funding has been frozen, though VR still maintains their trust in her research. Apparently, also the Sahlgrenska Academy of Gothenburg.

Continue reading “Mild criticism only for Sumitran-Holgersson and Olausson from Gothenburg University Hospital investigation” →

Sumitran-Holgersson’s funding frozen, paper retracted

The misconduct-tainted University of Gothenburg professor of transplantation biology Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson (see my detailed report here), has now lost a critical publication due to data manipulation, her funding by the charity Hjärt-Lungfondens (Heart-Lung-Foundation) has been frozen. This is what the General Secretary of Hjärt-Lungfondens, Kristina Sparreljung told me:

“Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson has an ongoing support from us during 2016 and 2017 with 500,000 Swedish crowns per year. She has received 500,000 Swedish crowns so far. As soon as the cheating issue came to our attention, we have made every effort to assess the situation and act properly based on the information we have. As a first step, we decided to freeze the payments. We have also asked the institution [University of Gothenburg, -LS] to freeze its payments, but they have decided to let Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson research further until the investigation is complete. She will not receive any more money from us until the investigation is complete”.

Also Björn Aschan, Chairman of the Gothenburg-based charity IngaBritt and Arne Lundbergs Research Foundation informs that their 2.5 Mio SEK funding to Sumitran Holgersson has been suspended:

“The funding of equipment to the Gothenburg University for Professor Sumatran-Holgerssons research has temporarily been suspended awaiting the outcome of the investigation re. Professor Sumitran-Holgersson’s research”.

The retracted paper by Sumitran-Holgersson (Berg et al, Tissue Eng Part A. 2014) concerns her experiments with Macchiarini-style “regenerated” trachea. There, an alleged cure of a 76-year old chronic asthma patient is described, who suffered death from infection shortly after receiving the trachea transplant. The operation was performed by Sumitran-Holgersson’s close collaborator, Michael Olausson, director of the Transplant Center at the University of Gothenburg. Continue reading “Sumitran-Holgersson’s funding frozen, paper retracted” →

Does The Lancet care about patients?

The Lancet, an elite medical journal published by Elsevier, is responsible for a number of controversial publications, on which its Editor-in-Chief Richard Horton and his editorial office have not always acted to everyone’s satisfaction.

The Lancet and the magic of stem cells

The probably biggest Lancet scandal now is that of the trachea transplant surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, the recently sacked professor at the Swedish Karolinska Institutet (KI). His most prominent critic, Belgian thoracic surgeon Pierre Delaere has publicly called on my site for a retraction of all four of Macchiarini’s paper in The Lancet (Macchiarini et al. 2008, Jungebluth et al. 2011, Badylak et al 2012, Gonfiotti et al. 2014); also the Swedish Academy of Sciences asked the journal to act on Macchiarini’s papers. Elsewhere, Italian media provided evidence that the Gonfiotti et al. 2014 case report paper “The first tissue-engineered airway transplantation: 5-year follow-up results” misrepresented the true medical condition of Macchiarini’s first stem –cell regenerated trachea recipient. Corriere Fiorentino reported in February 2016: Continue reading “Does The Lancet care about patients?” →

For Better Science

Science journalism by Leonid Schneider, on research integrity and academic publishing in life sciences and biomedicine

Tag: Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson