”KI:s anseende har inte påverkats av Macchiarini”

Paolo Macchiarini (born August 22, 1958) is a thoracic surgeon and a former professor of regenerative medicine at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. As of 2016 he was being investigated for research fraud. Previously he was considered a pioneer in the field of regenerative medicine using both biological and synthetic scaffolds seeded with patients' own stem cells as trachea transplants. Macchiarini has been accused of research misconduct and unethically performing experimental surgeries, even on relatively healthy patients. Six of the eight patients who received one of his synthetic trachea transplants have died. Also, an article in Vanity Fair suggested that Macchiarini had falsified some of his academic credentials on résumés. Similar accusations have been published in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet according to which Macchiarini's claim to have been a professor at universities in Hannover and Barcelona has turned out to be false. The secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, Urban Lendahl, resigned in February 2016, owing to his involvement in recruiting Macchiarini to Karolinska Institutet in 2010. Shortly afterwards the vice chancellor, Anders Hamsten, who in 2015 had cleared Macchiarini of scientific misconduct also resigned. Macchiarini's employment by Karolinska is due to end in November 2016 following a decision by the institution not to renew his contract. On March 23, 2016 the Staff Disciplinary Board at KI announced that his employee relationship with the institute had been effectively terminated.