Another University Finds Manipulated Trial Data For Novartis Drug

The scandal over research into the Diovan heart drug in Japan is beginning to resemble a game of Whack-A-Mole. One day after Novartis attempted to put the matter to rest by announcing its own investigation was completed, another university has disclosed that data in a trial was manipulated and the first author of the study, a professor at the university, says the work will be retracted. In a press conference, Kazuhiro Hashimoto, who chairs an investigation committee at the Jikei University School of Medicine, indicated that a former Novartis employee might have manipulated the data, while noting that the former worker denied wrongdoing in an interview, according to The Japan Times. The relationship between the employee and the drugmaker was not disclosed in the 2007 publication. This amounts to another embarrassing development for the drugmaker, which has been rocked by a series of retracted papers concerning the medication, a huge seller in Japan that reached $5.6 billion in worldwide sales in 2011 before generics became available. That was also when questions were first raised about Diovan research conducted in Japan and ties between researchers and Novartis. As we noted previously, the episode initially focused on Hiroaki Matsubara, the principal investigator in several studies who co-authored Diovan papers between 2008 and 2012. He subsequently resigned his position from Kyoto Prefectrual University of Medicine. More recently, the Japanese health minister and university o...
Source: Pharmalot - Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs