Years After Brigham-Harvard Scandal, US Pours Millions Into Tainted Stem-Cell Field

Faked heart studies by a once-obscure scientist duped the U.S. government and medical establishment for years. Washington is still paying for it. From a Reuters investigation: Mario Ricciardi, a young Italian molecular biologist, was thrilled when he was selected to work with one of Harvard Medical School's most successful stem cell researchers. His new boss, Dr. Piero Anversa, had become famous within the field for his bold findings in 2001 that adult stem cells had special abilities to regenerate hearts or even cure heart disease, the leading cause of U.S. deaths . Millions in U.S. government grants poured into Anversa's lab at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Top journals published his papers. And the American Heart Association (AHA) proclaimed him a "research pioneer." "He was like a god," recalled Ricciardi, now 39, one of several scientists to speak out for the first time about their experiences in Anversa's lab. Within a year of Ricciardi's arrival in 2011, they grew suspicious, the scientists recalled. They couldn't replicate the seminal findings of their celebrated boss and became concerned that data and images of cells were being manipulated. Anversa and his deputy gruffly dismissed their questions, they said. They took their concerns to Brigham officials, telling them that Anversa's blockbuster results appeared to have been faked. "The science just wasn't there," Ricciardi said. After an investigation lasting almost six years, Brigham and Harvard wrote in a two-paragraph statement that they had found "falsified and/or fabricated data" in 31 papers authored by Anversa and his collaborators. In April 2017, the U.S. Justice Department separately concluded in a civil settlement with Brigham that Anversa's lab relied on "the fabrication of data and images" in seeking government grants and engaged in "reckless or deliberately misleading record-keeping." Yet federal money has continued to flow to test the proposition advanced by Anversa -- that adult stem cells can regenerate or heal hearts. Over two decades, federal and private grants have streamed into research labs despite allegations of fraud and fabrication against Anversa and others in the field, Reuters found. Meanwhile, no scientist has credibly established that Anversa's regeneration hypothesis holds true in humans, according to researchers and a review of medical literature.

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