Paolo Macchiarini

Paolo Macchiarini (born 22 August 1958) is a Swiss-born Italian thoracic surgeon and former regenerative medicine researcher who became known for research fraud and manipulative behavior.

He was convicted of research-related crimes in Italy and Sweden.

Macchiarini obtained his medical degree (equivalent to MD) at the Medical School of the University of Pisa (UniPi) in 1986 and a Master of Surgery in 1991.

He claimed he was a fellow for approximately two years in the Department of Thoracic Surgery at University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1989, though this was refuted later by the university as they did not have a department of thoracic surgery, nor do they have one currently.

He was, however, a fellow for 6 months in their Hematology/Oncology department.

He was an assistant professor at UniPi from 1990 to 1992.

Macchiarini obtained degree certificates—a masters in organ and tissue transplantation dated 1994 and a doctorate in the same dated 1997—from University of Franche-Comté in France.

According to Germany's Hannover Medical School, he never had a salaried position there, but was head of the department of thoracic and vascular surgery at the Heidehaus Hanover hospital between 1999 and 2004.

Macchiarini was an investigator at the Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques-Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas in Barcelona, Spain, from 2006 to 2009; he was affiliated with but not an employee of the University of Barcelona and was apparently an employee at the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona during this time.

In June 2008, Macchiarini conducted a transplant of a donated trachea colonized with the stem cells of the recipient, Claudia Castillo; the tissue was used to replace her left bronchus, which had been damaged by tuberculosis, and her left lung had collapsed.

The trachea came from a cadaver, and was stripped of its cells and seeded with cells taken from Castillo's bone marrow.

The bone marrow cells were cultured at the University of Bristol, the donor trachea was stripped at University of Padua, the stripped trachea was seeded with the cultured cells at University of Milan, and the trachea was transplanted by a team led by Macchiarini at Hospital Clinic in Barcelona.

He had an honorary appointment as a visiting professor from 2009 to 2014, at University College London.

Previously considered a pioneer for using both biological and synthetic scaffolds seeded with patients' own stem cells as trachea transplants, Macchiarini was a visiting professor and director on a temporary contract at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet (KI) from 2010.

Macchiarini was convicted of unethically performing experimental surgeries, even on relatively healthy patients, resulting in fatalities for seven of the eight patients who received one of his synthetic trachea transplants.

Articles in Vanity Fair and Aftonbladet further suggested he had falsified some academic credentials on résumés.

He was a consultant and project manager at University Hospital Careggi (AOUC) starting in 2010.

Later in 2010, Macchiarini was appointed as a visiting professor at the Karolinska Institute (KI) in Stockholm and as a part-time position as surgeon at the affiliated university hospital.

Macchiarini made ties in Russia after he gave a master class in 2010, at the invitation of politician Mikhail Batin; a few months later he did a trachea transplant there which was widely covered in Russian media.

In March 2010, Macchiarini attended a transplant performed by Great Ormond Street surgeons.

Similar to the one done for Castillo, this was on a ten-year-old Irish boy, Ciaran Finn-Lynch, at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.

The boy was born with a 1 mm diameter trachea, and efforts to widen it had caused life-threatening complications.

Unlike the Castillo procedure, in this case, the stripped trachea was seeded with the boy's stem cells just hours before it was implanted.

This led to Macchiarini's 2011 appointment at Kuban State Medical University, funded by the university and the Russian government, along with an honorary doctorate.

KI terminated its clinical relationship with Macchiarini in 2013 but allowed him to continue as a researcher; in February 2016, the university announced it would not renew his research contract, which was due to expire in November, and terminated the contract the following month.

In 2013, his clinical relationship with KI was terminated, but Macchiarini was able to continue his research at the institute.

Shortly afterwards KI's vice chancellor, Anders Hamsten, who in 2015 had cleared Macchiarini of misconduct, resigned.

Urban Lendahl, the secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, resigned in February 2016, owing to his involvement in recruiting Macchiarini to KI.

In February 2016, the university announced that it would not renew Macchiarini's research contract, which was due to expire in November, and terminated the contract the following month.

KI published the incomplete results of its verification of Macchiarini's CV in February 2016.

In 2016, he moved to Kazan Federal University and the grant money moved with him.

After being dismissed from KI, Macchiarini worked at the Kazan Federal University in Russia until that institution terminated his project in April 2017, effectively firing him.

After a one-year medico-legal investigation, the Swedish Prosecution Authority announced in October 2017 that Macchiarini had been negligent in four of the five cases investigated, due to the use of devices and procedures not supported by evidence, but a crime could not be proven because the patients might have died under any other treatment given.

Macchiarini was convicted of causing bodily harm, but not assault.

He received a suspended sentence in June 2022.

However, a year later his sentence was increased to two years and six months imprisonment by an appeals court.

Following an appeal to the Supreme Court, the Court declined to consider the appeal in October 2023.

Sweden's Expert Group on Scientific Misconduct found evidence of research fraud by Macchiarini and his co-authors in six papers and called for them to be retracted.

As of 2023, Macchiarini has had 11 of his research papers retracted, four others have received an expression of concern, and three others have been corrected.

In April 2017, the university terminated Macchiarini's research project there.