Exosome scientist Douglas Taylor stole and mislabeled images: report
AAn investigation by the United States Office of Research Integrity found that exosome biologist Douglas Taylor engaged in research misconduct while funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health. The former University of Louisville School of Medicine professor and current chief scientist at biotech company Exosome Sciences “used falsely labeled images to falsely report data in numbers” in 13 grant applications, including one a been funded, and in two published articles, according to the OU JE case summarywhich was updated yesterday (22 November).
Investigations into Taylor’s misconduct date back to at least 2015, Retraction watch reports, when the University of Louisville (UL) conducted an investigation into Taylor’s potential misconduct. His Institutional Investigation Board determined that several figures in a 2006 article of which he was the first author were falsified and requested that the article be removed from the Journal of Immunologyaccording to a 2015 declaration of withdrawal on the journal’s website. In a written statement at Retraction watch the same year, Taylor called the survey results “biased” and argued that neither he nor his wife Cicek Gercel-Taylor, a fellow researcher at UL who was a co-author of the study, n were involved in creating the falsified figures.
According Retraction watch, UL reported the results of its investigation to ORI, which conducted a surveillance review of UL’s investigation and gathered additional evidence before issuing its own findings of misconduct. Taylor’s mistagging of images in the 15 reported apps and articles was done “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly,” according to the ORI report, and in one instance, Taylor “plagiarized, reused, and falsely tagged an image to falsely report data in a figure”. .”
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Prior to the ongoing investigations, Taylor was best known for editing papers in the early 1980s documenting what are now called tumor-secreted exosomes – vesicles secreted by tumor cells that facilitate cell-cell communication and allow tumor cells to migrate through the body – and for his later research on exosomes. Exosome Sciences, which he joined with Gercel-Taylor in 2013, aims to find exosome biomarkers to “diagnose and monitor life-threatening diseases,” according to his profile page on the website of majority shareholder Aethlon Medical.
Taylor has also studied exosomes during pregnancy and premature birth; grant applications and flagged papers all relate to exosomes in cancer or pregnancy, and both reported papers were published in the journal Gynecological oncology. The second reported paper, which characterized the microRNA signatures of tumor-derived exosomes, has been cited over 1,780 times, Retraction watch Remarks.
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ORI’s announcement bars Taylor from receiving a federal grant or serving on federal public health services advisory boards or peer review panels for a three-year period beginning Oct. 17, 2022. Taylor did not respond to Retraction watchrequest for comment.
