University of PennsylvaniaWIKIMEDIA COMMONS, BRYAN Y.W. SHIN

Prominent researcher Craig Thompson, current president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, is being sued by his former employer, the Leonard and Madlyn Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, which he headed for 12 years, for not disclosing his industry activities.

While at the institute, he founded a biotech company called Agios pharmaceuticals. In the $1 billion lawsuit, the Leonard and Madlyn Abramson Institute claims that Thompson was not forthcoming about founding Agios, simply saying that he was interested in starting a company based on the potential of a common diabetes drug in cancer prevention. According to the suit, he did not follow up when the company was launched in 2007. The institute claims that it has rights to the intellectual property that the company was founded on, according to ScienceInsider.

However, Thompson’s affiliation was not...

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