Partners HealthCare System settles for $10 million to resolve fraud allegations
The Partners HealthCare System and Brigham and Women’s Hospital agreed to pay $10 million to resolve allegations that the hospital’s stem cell research laboratory fraudulently obtained grant funding.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced the settlement on April 27. The Boston-based Brigham and Women’s Hospital is part of the Partners HealthCare System.
The allegations pertained to applications that the laboratory submitted for a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grant aimed at using stem cells to repair damage to the heart. The government alleged that three former laboratory employees (Piero Anversa, MD; Annarosa Leri, MD; and Jan Kajstura, MD) knew or should have known that the laboratory relied on manipulated and falsified information. All three doctors are no longer affiliated with Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
An attorney representing Anversa and Leri told the Boston Globe they were not involved in the settlement negotiations. The newspaper reported Anversa and Leri work at a research institute in Switzerland and that it could not reach Kajstura’s attorney for comment.
The government alleged that at the direction of Anversa, Leri and Kajstura, the laboratory included false scientific information to obtain and use funds from the NIH grants. The alleged issues included improper protocols, invalid and inaccurately characterized cardiac stem cells, reckless or deliberately misleading record-keeping and discrepancies and/or fabrication of data and images used in applications and publications.
When Brigham and Women’s Hospital became aware of the allegations in 2014, it investigated the allegations and disclosed its concerns with the government. The Boston Globe reported that Harvard Medical School requested that Circulation retract a paper that Anversa and Leri published in 2012 and notified editors of The Lancet that it was investigating a paper that Anversa was involved with in 2011. The newspaper noted that Anversa and Leri sued Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and that the case was pending.
“Individuals and institutions that receive research funding from NIH have an obligation to conduct their research honestly and not to alter results to conform with unproven hypotheses,” Acting U.S. Attorney William D. Weinreb said in a news release. “Medical research fraud not only wastes scarce government resources but also undermines the scientific process and the search for better treatments for serious diseases. We commend Brigham and Women’s for self-disclosing the allegations of fraudulent research at the Anversa laboratory, and for taking steps to prevent future recurrences of such conduct.”
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.