GlaxoSmithKline Fires China R&D Boss for 'Misrepresented' Data

 Published: Tuesday, 11 Jun 2013 | 6:35 PM ETBy: Dan Mangan | WriterGlaxoSmithKline has dismissed its head of research and development in China after an email tip prompted an investigation that determined data used in a 2010 research paper were "misrepresented," the company said.The drugmaker also accepted the resignation of a co-author of the paper on multiple sclerosis, which was published in Nature Medicine, and placed three other employees in China on administrative leave pending a review.GSK now wants the disputed paper, which dealt with the possible role of the molecule interleukin-7 as a risk factor for MS, to be retracted by Nature Medicine. But it is unclear if the two terminated researchers will sign agree to that request."We are committed to the highest ethical and scientific standards, and regulators, physicians and patients can have confidence in the research we carry out," GSK said in a statement.(Read More: FDA Panel Votes to Ease Avandia Restrictions )The study was led by Jingwu Zang, senior vice president and head of the R&D center's department of neuroimmunology in Shanghai. The paper's top author was GSK researcher Xuebin Liu.Zang, who had held the job since 2007, has been fired; Liu resigned in light of questions about the data.Their paper claimed that research had "found data suggesting that the signaling molecule interleukin-7 caused a subset of T-cells .... taken from people with multiple sclerosis to multiply," a...
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