ABOVE: Harvard Medical School, where Piero Anversa was affiliated, has asked for 31 of Anversa's papers to be retracted.
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A clinical trial testing whether cells described as cardiac stem cells could aid patients with chronic heart failure has been paused, according to a statement released yesterday (October 29) by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which is collaborating with the University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, on the experiment. The suspension of the study comes after Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital recently recommended that 31 papers from the group that first reported these so-called c-kit cells be retracted.
In the early 2000s, cardiac researcher Piero Anversa claimed that c-kit cells could regenerate heart muscle, but those findings were controversial, and many other scientists failed to reproduce them. Nevertheless, clinical trials aiming to capitalize on the cells’ reported regenerative capacity commenced.
In 2015, the ...
