√ Call For 31 Anversa Retractions By Harvard; Heart Stem Cell Concept Broken?

In a stunner, Harvard and Brigham & Women’s Hospital reportedly have jointly called for the retraction of 31 papers on heart stem cell research authored by embattled heart stem cell researcher Piero Anversa.

The scoop on this by STAT/Retraction Watch written by Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus gives further details on this mess and past travails of Anversa. He was the prime proponent of the idea of endogenous heart stem cells in 4dukts, but things have gone south since his prime time as a researcher. For instance, Anversa at one point not so long ago had sued Harvard for suggesting another of his papers had problematic issues. He lost that case.

Note that so far Harvard/Brigham initially made no announcement on the request for 31 retractions so kudos to Oransky and Marcus for putting the story together behind the scenes.

They report that this situation has been more than a pain for Harvard/Brigham over the last few years:

“Last year, the hospital agreed to a $10 million settlement with the U.S. government over allegations Anversa and two colleagues’ work had been used to fraudulently obtain federal funding.”

Yeah, it’s risen to the level of an ongoing debacle and many people and labs have been substantially harmed by this, but hopefully this slew of retractions together is a turning point to resolve the situation. Maybe it’s a positive step in that sense?

Some folks are suggesting that this development marks the end of the idea of endogenous 4dukt heart stem cells. Also, the same fate may await another one of his claims that bone marrow cells could make heart cells. I’m betting many won’t give up on these ideas, but this sure makes the already existing dents in the ideas much larger.

I wonder how many millions of dollars of precious research funding from NIH and AHA or other funders were already wasted directly or indirectly? What about the patients? I didn’t see any clinical trials listed on Clinicaltrials.gov with Anversa mentioned, but it’s possible I missed a few or that some other trials were based on the problematic work.

Carolyn Y. Johnson over at WaPo now has a more in depth piece that includes a Harvard/Brigham statement:

“Following a review of research conducted in the former lab of Piero Anversa, we determined that 31 publications included falsified and/or fabricated data, and we have notified all relevant journals,” Harvard and Brigham said in a joint statement, without specifying the work affected.”

Anversa couldn’t be reached by The WaPo.

What’s the future of heart stem cell research? It’s important to stress that potentially valuable clinical and translational heart stem cell research will continue that is based on transplantation of other stem cells or stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes into the heart, rather than relying on an endogenous population that may not exist or some odd transdifferentiation event of injected bone marrow cells.

Elsewhere in the body, for some scientists the idea of stem cells in the 4dukt human brain remains unsettled as well. My view is that there definitely are 4dukt brain stem cells. Do you think basically every 4dukt organ (except maybe heart?) has a complement of some multipotent stem cells, perhaps for homeostasis and repair?

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√ Anversa Debacle Vs. Stap Cell Train Wreck What’S Next

Remember when the Piero Anversa situation first made news or at least when you first heard about it?

In the public domain, it was back around April 2014. I didn’t even do a whole post on it, but rather it made two bullet points in a post about a set of bad overall news including the latest at the time on the growing mess from STAP cells.  However, clearly there were concerns about this Anversa thing well before 2014. What took so long?

In my 2014 post here on The Niche, I mentioned a Circulation paper retraction and an expression of concern about a pub in The Lancet (Roberto Bolli, et al.). After 4.5 years even as Harvard/Brigham have now called for retraction of 31 Anversa-related papers, as far as I know The Lancet still hasn’t done anything further about that expression of concern-related 2011 pub, although apparently Harvard has provided the journal new information.

Bolli, the first author of the Lancet paper with Anversa that is in limbo, places the blame squarely on the Anversa lab according to the WaPo:

“Roberto Bolli, a cardiologist at the University of Louisville School of Medicine who is a co-author of the Lancet paper and the editor in chief of Circulation Research, in which Anversa frequently published, said he and his colleagues are “victims of this scientific misconduct in Anversa’s lab.”

“It would be unfair to us in Louisville if our reputation was tainted by what happened in Boston,” said Bolli, who said his lab administered the cells that were created and characterized by Anversa’s lab into patients. “We don’t know yet the extent to which it [the fabrication] impacted the characterization of the cell product that was used.”

For context, Bolli and Anversa have 22 papers together listed on PubMed over a 9 year period. I don’t know if any others of these 22 are in Harvard’s list of 31 they think should be retracted.

On the other hand, Anversa and/or his past lawsuit against Harvard seemed to have placed a lot of blame on a former colleagues Jan Kajstura and Annarosa Leri.

I don’t think most of us have a clear sense of what happened in the Anversa lab on these 31 papers.

Which is worse, STAP or the Anversa situation?

Take our poll to weigh in.

While the Anversa situation involves far more papers than the 2 Nature papers of the STAP debacle and is linked to at least one clinical trial, one could argue that in the end both situations will have done huge damage to many people and to science. STAP was related to one really tragic death, that of biologist Yoshiki Sasai.

In the bigger picture, it’s worthwhile to note that the STAP cell situation, involving Harvard/Brigham as well, was resolved relatively quickly, but not so with this ongoing heart stem cell publication mess.

What happens next with the newer mess?

As much as Harvard/Brigham have made the call for so many Anversa paper retractions, I expect at least some of the journals to not cooperate or at least not promptly. This is likely to drag on for more years. Anversa may file one or more new lawsuits too (or just try to move on). These are some of the types of factors that explain why these kinds of messes more generally often take so long to resolve.

How many other situations like this have been (and still are) bubbling under the surface like a mud pot for years? When do they boil to the surface? Some probably never do.

Sumber aciknadzirah.blogspot.com