Year after year, a husband-and-wife team at a university in Iran has been publishing studies involving research on cell lines ostensibly purchased from the Pasteur Institute of Iran, in Tehran.
But the couple may never have been in possession of the cells. In correspondence obtained by Retraction Watch, the Pasteur Institute told their employer, Jahrom University of Medical Sciences, only three of the many cell lines described in their publications had been available at the national cell bank over the past decade.
A university official confirmed the two researchers – Fraidoon Kavoosi, an associate professor in the department of anatomical science, and his wife Masumeh Sanaei, an assistant professor in the same department – were under investigation.
Amir Abdoli, vice president of research and technology at Jahrom University of Medical Sciences, told us:
There were some ambiguities regarding the availability of cell lines in the Pasteur Institute of Iran as well as the place of [the couple’s] works, as their works have not been performed in the laboratories of Jahrom University of Medical Sciences. We asked the authors to respond several times, but we didn’t receive a reasonable answer. Hence, we had to send the documents and evidence to the Iran National Committee for Ethics in Biomedical Research for future investigation and decision.
We have not yet contacted the journals because we are waiting for the ethics committee’s decision.
Abdoli added that following a vote by the Basic Science Research Committee of the Faculty of Medicine, the school had stopped accepting new research proposals from the two professors.
In theory, it’s possible that researchers claiming to have obtained cell lines from a repository that doesn’t stock them may still have worked with those cell lines, according to Jennifer Byrne, director of biobanking with NSW Health Pathology, in Australia, and a professor of molecular oncology at the University of Sydney:
For example, they could have obtained them from someone else who they assumed had obtained them from the claimed repository, but didn’t. The claimed resource could reflect people wanting to signal that they obtained cell lines from a known repository, as this is best practice, or a trust signal, when in fact, many researchers pass cell lines between each other as this is quicker, cheaper and more convenient. That said, claiming to use cell lines from a repository that doesn’t stock them could be considered a yellow flag, as this is a misleading claim, although a claim that could have been made in good faith.
In a study published earlier this year, Byrne and her colleagues found hundreds of papers consistently misspelled the names of cell lines the authors said they used in their work – possibly a sign of paper mill involvement. The Iranian case is different, as the cell lines described in the couple’s articles seem to be real.
“I don’t know how often people might claim to have obtained cell lines that do exist from places that don’t stock these cell lines, as we focussed on non-verifiable cell lines in our study,” Byrne told us.
Kavoosi did not respond to emails requesting comment. We were unable to find contact information for Sanaei.
Since 2014, the couple has coauthored dozens of studies, according to their Google Scholar profiles. Many have appeared in Iran-based journals, such as the International Journal of Preventive Medicine, Advanced Biomedical Research, and Research in Pharmaceutical Sciences, all published by Wolters Kluwer, as well as the Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention.
Most of their work has focused on assessing effects of established or potential drugs on human cancer cells. The suspect articles all state the cells were obtained from the Pasteur Institute of Iran.
But a letter from Jahrom’s president to the Pasteur Institute dated Oct. 31, 2023, suggests the the research duo’s institution had grown suspicious of their work.
According to a machine translation of the letter, Mohammad Rahmanian inquired about a long list of cell lines he said were unavailable from Pasteur’s website but were needed by his school for research. He listed the names of 70 cell lines he was looking to purchase in an attached spreadsheet.
We spot-checked the cell lines in the spreadsheet and found they appeared to correspond to cells Kavoosi, Sanaei and their coauthors stated they had purchased from the Pasteur Institute of Iran.
In a reply to Jahrom dated April 16, 2024, Delaram Doroud, deputy director of research, technology and education at the Pasteur Institute of Iran, made reference to a subsequent letter and a phone call from Jahrom University and explained that, in the past 10 years, only three of the 70 cell lines had been available from the institute.
We sought comment from the Pasteur Institute of Iran, including Doroud, and the Iran National Committee for Ethics in Biomedical Research, but have not heard back.
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