Partners Healthcare and Brigham and Womens Hospital to Pay $10 Million (Fraud)

[nitpicker]

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/partners-healthcare-and-brigham-and-women-s-hospital-agree-pay-10-million-resolve

Department of Justice
U.S. Attorney’s Office
District of Massachusetts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, April 27, 2017

Partners Healthcare and Brigham and Women’s Hospital Agree to Pay $10 Million to Resolve Research Fraud Allegations

BOSTON – The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced today that Partners HealthCare System and one of its hospitals, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (collectively, BWH), have agreed to pay $10 million to resolve allegations that a BWH stem cell research laboratory run by Dr. Piero Anversa fraudulently obtained grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). BWH disclosed these allegations to the government.

The settlement resolves allegations that Dr. Anversa, along with Dr. Annarosa Leri and Dr. Jan Kajstura, knew or should have known that their laboratory promulgated and relied upon manipulated and falsified information, including confocal microscope images and carbon-14 age data for cells, in applications submitted for NIH research grant awards concerning the purported ability of stem cells to repair damage to the heart. The government alleges that problems with the work of the laboratory 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 included in applications and publications. The government contends that, at the direction of these BWH scientists, the Anversa laboratory included false scientific information in claims to NIH in order to obtain and use funds from NIH grants. Drs. Anversa, Leri, and Kajstura are no longer affiliated with BWH.
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After learning of the allegations of research misconduct in the Anversa laboratory, BWH investigated the allegations, disclosed its concerns to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and Office of Research Integrity, and then worked cooperatively with OIG and the Department of Justice to explain the bases for the allegations.
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