Nature discussing possible patent fraud involving Luk van Parijs

Further to an an earlier post on IPBiz, freelance author Eugenie Reich suggested in a January 2006 article in Nature that there may be fraud in a US patent application involving David Baltimore and fired MIT professor, Luk van Parijs. Baltimore has denied the suggestion.

Baltimore and van Parijs jointly authored a paper in the 2002 volume of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002 Apr 30;99(9):6204-9.

Contributed by David Baltimore
Accepted March 15, 2002.


Generation of functional antigen-specific T cells in defined genetic backgrounds by retrovirus-mediated _expression of TCR cDNAs in hematopoietic precursor cells.

Yang L, Qin XF, Baltimore D, Van Parijs L.

Department of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.

We have developed an alternative to transgenesis for producing antigen-specific T cells in vivo. In this system, clonal naive T cells with defined antigen specificity are generated by retrovirus-mediated _expression of T cell antigen receptor cDNAs in RAG1-deficient murine hematopoietic precursor cells. These T cells can be stimulated to proliferate and produce cytokines by exposure to antigen in vitro, and they become activated and expand in vivo after immunization. IL-2-deficient T cells generated by this technique show decreased proliferation and cytokine production, both of which can be rescued by exogenous addition of this growth factor. Thus, retrovirus-mediated _expression of T cell antigen receptor cDNAs in hematopoietic precursor cells permits the rapid and efficient analysis of the life history of antigen-specific T cells in different genetic backgrounds and may allow for the long-term production of antigen-specific T cells with different functional properties for prophylactic and therapeutic purposes.

The entry for van Perijs on Wikipedia mentions falsifications in a paper and grant applications, but not patent applications:

Luk Van Parijs was an associate professor of biology in Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Cancer Research. On October 27, 2005, MIT fired Van Parijs for research misconduct after Van Parijs admitted to fabricating and falsifying research data in a published paper, several unpublished manuscripts, and grant applications.

Van Parijs' area of research was in the use of short-interference RNA in studying disease mechanisms, especially in autoimmune diseases. He was studying normal immune cell function and defects in these cells during disease development.