An MIT professor named Ram Saisekharan has recently got famous after giving an idea in which the algorithms, as well as other computer models, will lead to the better as well as other potent therapies. This is said to be like a promise. As a result, he launched three biotech companies, and the companies have attracted hundreds of millions of dollars.
But now, from the three earlier discoveries that he has announced, two of the discoveries is said to be a computational approach, and it is very much identical with the compounds. These two of the compounds are said to be discovered earlier by other labs. This has been mentioned in the new paper by some other researchers. As per the author, after this incident, there is now a series of doubts on the discoveries of Sasiekharan’s research.
According to Tillman Gerngross, who is the CEO of a private biotech firm Adimab and also the co-author of this paper said that they will now be starting to look into these two of the cases of Saisekharan. In this case, they find some irregularities in both of it. Tillman added by saying that if you are sitting in the kitchen and you saw two fat cockroaches walk across the floor, then what is the chance that there is only two of them?
In the year 2017, it was seen that Sasiekharan’s influenza therapy which was described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is said to be identical with one of the paper which was published six years earlier, as per Adimab. As per the researchers, the Zika antibody which Sasiekharan’s lab mentioned earlier in 2018 is seemed to be near to same Zika antibody that the other company has described in Nature during the year 2016.
The paper which got published on Monday in the Journal mAbs said that Gerngross and the Adimab colleagues said that two of the antibody therapies are now described by the Sasiekharan’s lab which includes both Zika virus and influenza seemed to be same from the past work of other scientists.
In reply to all these statements and accusations, Sasisekharan said in an email that the paper which mentioned the similarity of work is inaccurate and false. If you go through the work carefully, then you will find that there will be a fundamental difference between the Zika antibody that his lab has discovered and the Zika antibody that was discovered in the year 2016. This influenza therapy is said to be designed by Visterra, which is a biotech company which he has co-founded.
As per MIT spokeswoman, she said that the federal regulations, as well as MIT policy, will not allow us to comment on any kind of particular matter. The research of integrity at MIT is said to be paramount. As per the policy of MIT and its confidential processes in this place, it helps in assessing all the concerns which may be present or given rise during this time.