Category: St Jude’s Children’s Hospital

NEJM corrects 3 papers after prominent cancer scientist left off credit for breakthrough

Screen Shot 2016-03-15 at 12.04.43 PMThe New England Journal of Medicine has corrected three highly cited papers to credit researchers who played a role in the work.

The papers describe a treatment in which engineered T cells fight leukemia, originally hailed as a “major advance” in the New York Times. Since the first paper appeared in 2011, co-author Carl June at the University of Pennsylvania has received more than $7 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health, according to MIT Technology Review. But according to a newly published correction, the three NEJM papers failed to note in the acknowledgement section that an important component of the experiments was supplied by researchers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

The correction, made 11 months after a request from co-author and Penn researcher David Porter, explains the contribution of the St Jude’s researchers:

Continue reading NEJM corrects 3 papers after prominent cancer scientist left off credit for breakthrough

Intellectual property issues sink cancer paper in JACS

176 spine minimum. full size. Editor: Lingling JEM: Leslie RTP: Michael ReidThe authors of a paper on a mechanism for potential cancer therapies are retracting it after realizing they published some proprietary findings “without permission and agreement from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.”

According to the retraction note in Journal of the American Chemical Society, the authors included an X-ray crystal structure and data that were gathered at St. Jude’s and considered the hospital’s intellectual property. On the paper, the last author, Zhengding Su, listed an affiliation at St. Jude and Hubei University of Technology in China, along with Amersino Biodevelop Inc., based in Waterloo, Canada.

Here’s the note for “Efficient Reactivation of p53 in Cancer Cells by a Dual MdmX/Mdm2 Inhibitor:”  Continue reading Intellectual property issues sink cancer paper in JACS

St. Jude investigation finds faked data in brain tumor paper

S00396060An investigation at St. Jude Children’s Hospital into “irregularities” in a figure featured in a neuroblastoma paper has concluded that the image was fabricated. The paper, published in Surgery in 2012, was retracted on Friday.

Here’s the full retraction notice for “Liposome-encapsulated curcumin suppresses neuroblastoma growth through nuclear factor-kappa B inhibition:”

Continue reading St. Jude investigation finds faked data in brain tumor paper

Exclusive: St. Jude Children’s suspends enrollment in cancer trials over toxicity concerns

st judesSt. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis has temporarily halted enrollment in six bone marrow transplant trials due to concerns over how side effects were being identified in medical records, Retraction Watch has learned.

According to a source familiar with the trials, five of the six being suspended were all enrolling children with blood cancers who lacked a matching donor. During the trials, doctors took bone marrow from a parent — not a perfect match — and manipulated the cells before transplant to make them more capable of killing cancer, and less likely to be rejected.

Four trials, a few of which were scheduled to enroll more than 100 children, are being led by Brandon Triplett. Two are led by Mari Dallas, according to the source. Genzyme and the U.S. National Cancer Institute are listed as collaborators. Both Dallas and Triplett work under bone marrow transplant department chair Wing Leung.

We reached out to Scientific and Comprehensive Cancer Center Director Richard Gilbertson, who referred us to PR firm Rubenstein Public Relations. They sent us the following statement: Continue reading Exclusive: St. Jude Children’s suspends enrollment in cancer trials over toxicity concerns