LONDON—U.K. drug maker GlaxoSmithKline GSK.LN +1.14% PLC said it has fired
its head of R&D in China after discovering that a paper he helped write for
the journal Nature Medicine contained data that had been "misrepresented."
Glaxo has also placed three other employees on administrative leave pending
a full review of the situation. Another employee has resigned, the company
said.
Glaxo didn't say who was responsible for misrepresenting the data. In a
phone interview Wednesday, the fired head of R&D, Jiangwu Zang, denied any
role in or knowledge of data manipulation. He said he learned of the problem
only when Glaxo started investigating. Dr. Zang said his role as senior
author of the paper was to design the framework of the study and to polish
the draft, but not to compile or interpret data.
"I take a certain responsibility. I'm not trying to say I'm free of any
responsibility. But what I'm really angry about is, I was dragged into this
so-called data fabrication, which I've never been involved in," Dr. Zang
said.
He added that Glaxo dismissed him because it accused him of trying to hamper
a company investigation into the matter by coaching other scientists on
what to tell investigators—an accusation he denies.
Glaxo declined to name the other employees. Glaxo's Chinese R&D unit is a
small but growing part of the firm's research group, with 400 employees.
The company said it has concluded that the paper, published in 2010, should
be retracted, and it has asked "all of the authors to sign a statement to
that effect, according to Nature Medicine's procedure." Asked to comment, a
Nature Publishing Group spokeswoman said, "We do not comment on retractions
that may or may not be in the process of being considered."
Retractions in scientific journals have surged in recent years amid higher
scrutiny of research. Just 22 retractionsappeared in 2001, compared with 339
in 2010, according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science, an index of peer-
reviewed journals world-wide.
The Nature Medicine paper in question was written by Glaxo scientists
including Dr. Zang, whose last name is spelled Zhang on the paper but Zang
within Glaxo's systems, a company spokeswoman said.
The paper involved early-stage research into a human protein associated with
multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases. The research, which didn'
t involve an experimental drug, was carried out on blood samples from mice
and humans, the spokeswoman said.
The company subsequently developed an experimental drug for autoimmune
disease based in part on this research, the spokeswoman said, though she
added that the Nature Medicine paper was not "pivotal" in that drug's
development.
As a precaution, Glaxo has for now suspended an early-stage trial of the
drug, code-named GSK2618960, that was planned to be conducted in multiple
sclerosis patients, she said, though she added that the now tarnished Nature
Medicine paper "in no way impacts on our current understanding of the
safety profile" of GSK2618960.
Glaxo said it and Nature Medicine "recently became aware of allegations"
that data used in the paper had been "misrepresented." The data "were
wrongly characterized as the results of experiments conducted at Baylor
Medical College with blood cells donated by multiple sclerosis patients when
, in fact, the data reported were either the results of experiments
conducted at R&D China with [healthy human blood] samples or cannot be
documented at all," the company said.