Japanese university official accused of fabricating cancer research

Yasutomo Nasu, second from right, an Okayama University vice president and executive director for research, speaks at a March 24 news conference with other university officials. Ayaka Kibi OKAYAMA, professor of cell physiology at Okayama University, faced accusations of fabricating an academic paper on cancer research, prompting The Asahi Shimbun to delete the offending article from its online coverage.

AJW, the newspaper's English-language service, also took the same step.

Experts said the article in question had an unprecedented number of fabrications.

A research paper by Atsunori Kamiya was published March 24th, 2019 by Okayama University and the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center NCVC.

The research paper should be retracted and university officials said disciplinary measures were being considered against Kamiya.

At a March 24 news conference, Yasutomo Nasu, a university vice president and executive director for research, said: This is clearly an unprecedented case. The two organizations concluded that Kamiya lacked ethics as a scientist because of his fabrications.

Kamiya admitted to negligence, but denied any wrongdoing, according to university sources.

The paper in question was published in the British journal Nature Neuroscience in July 2019.

One conclusion of the paper was that cancer cells of breast cancer patients with a recurrence had a higher concentration of sympathetic nerves. The findings could lead to the development of a new treatment targeting the sympathetic nerves, according to the paper.

The research, based on mice with transplanted breast cancer cells, found that stimulating the sympathetic nerves resulted in an expansion of cancer cells and an increase in metastases.

The findings were called into question in 2020. Kamiya worked for the NCVC when the experiments were conducted, which led to a investigation by Okayama University and the NCVC.

The purchase record for the mice used in the experiment showed an insufficient number compared to the figure used in the research data, which triggered suspicions that the experiment as reported in the research paper was fictitious and not founded in fact.

The research paper also displayed images taken 60 days apart, but the data remaining in the analytical equipment found that the photos were taken the same day.

Kamiya did not submit the experiment data that was the basis for the research paper, claiming that the hard disk containing the information was damaged during a strong earthquake that struck northern Osaka Prefecture in 2018. The NCVC is located in Osaka Prefecture.

The original article by Asahi Shimbun published in the morning edition of the July 7, 2019 issue was translated by AJW under the headline Cell study: Stress increases spread, recurrence of breast cancer. Both the AJW translation and original Japanese article have been deleted because of Okayama University's announcement.