Paolo Macchiarini no longer works in Russia

The scientist, who was called the "Chernobyl of Swedish medicine", was denied funding

Sasha Sulim, Meduza

Surgeon Paolo Macchiarini at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, 2013
Photo: Lina Alriksson / DN / TT / Scanpix / LETA

Paolo Macchiarini, a transplant surgeon, whom Western media call the "Chernobyl of Swedish Medicine", is leaving Kazan Federal University. The university management confirmed this information to Medusa. At the beginning of 2016, the scientist was fired from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm "for committing actions incompatible with work in a scientific institution"; seven of his patients died after the operations he performed. Already in July 2016, Macchiarini headed the scientific laboratory at Kazan Federal University and continued his activities. In May 2017, it became known that the Russian Scientific Foundation, which financed the surgeon's activities, did not extend his grant. "Medusa" tells how Macchiarini's career in Russia ended.

Paolo Macchiarini became famous in 2011 when he performed the first artificial trachea transplant operation. At that time he was a professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm (representatives of this educational institution determine the winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine). Macchiarini's bioengineered trachea, a plastic tube seeded with stem cells from the patient himself, was supposed to be an alternative to donor organs; theoretically, it could help save hundreds of thousands of lives. In addition, he transplanted patients with trachea from dead people; their own cells were killed and replaced with stem cells. According to the scientist's idea, stem cells were supposed to multiply and turn into tracheal cells. Macchiarini did not test this method on animals; however, his method was called revolutionary.

After surgeries to transplant an artificial trachea, seven of his nine patients died, the rest of the organ had to be replaced with a donor one. In 2016, a commission led by the chairman of the Swedish Council for Medical Ethics found that the scientific justification of the operations was insufficient – Macchiarini's articles on transplantology contained falsified facts. Also, all the risks from such medical intervention were not taken into account. The scientist was fired, and the Swedish government dismissed the board of the Karolinska Institute; two members of the Nobel Assembly of Stockholm, professors of the Karolinska Institute, also had to resign. The Swedish prosecutor's office is still investigating the circumstances of Macchiarini's operations, the surgeon may be charged with manslaughter.

Macchiarini conducted his operations in Russia as well. In 2011, he received a grant from the Government of the Russian Federation – about 150 million rubles – and founded a laboratory of regenerative medicine on the basis of the Kuban State Medical University. In 2014, the scientist received another grant, this time from the Russian Science Foundation. In Krasnodar, he performed four bioengineered tracheal transplantation operations. The story about the successful completion of one of them was shown by the First Channel, but a year later the plastic tube of the implanted trachea collapsed; after that, the patient died. In the Western specialized media, Macchiarini was called the "Chernobyl of Swedish Medicine."

In July 2016, Paolo Macchiarini started working at Kazan Federal University. At the same time, a laboratory "Bioengineering and regenerative medicine" appeared at the university, and the scientist became the head of it. Macchiarini supervised the scientific work of graduate students of KFU and continued medical research – he conducted experiments on monkeys to test scaffolds (substrates for growing tissues and organs that can then be transplanted).

The rector of KFU Ilshat Gafurov said that Macchiarini chose their university to continue his scientific activities, because the equipment at the university is "one of the best in Russia." Macchiarini himself declined to comment and interview Medusa. In December 2016, the press service of the university published a detailed statement on the university's website under the heading "Conjectures and facts", in which it explained why Macchiarini's work is important for KFU and medicine in general.

On March 21, 2017, the journal Nature Communication withdrew a scientific article by Paolo Macchiarini about the successful transplantation of a donor trachea to laboratory rats – the article was published there in April 2014, after the professor had performed operations on humans. In April 2017, medical journalist Alla Astakhova, who had previously written about Macchiarini, reported on her website that the Russian Science Foundation had not extended the Macchiarini grant. This means that the scientist's project "Creation of a tissue-engineered esophagus structure to replace a damaged organ with a model of lower primates", which he was engaged in at KFU, lost funding. The Russian Scientific Foundation "Medusa" refused to comment on the withdrawal of the grant, asking to send a written request.

KFU Rector Ilshat Gafurov confirmed to Medusa that Macchiarini is leaving the university. "He [Macchiarini] worked for us on a grant. The grant is ending. And he has not been able to extend it further to date," Gafurov said. The press service of the university also stated that the scientist "ran out of a grant"; the representative of the university refused to comment on how effective the cooperation between KFU and Macchiarini was, when exactly the scientist would leave the university and what he would do next. Macchiarini did not respond to an email from a Medusa correspondent.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  17.05.2017