Hisashi Moriguchi said last year that he had treated, and in at least one case cured, heart failure patients using induced pluripotent stem cells. Not only was that untrue, but Nature also found that Moriguchi plagiarized much of his work as well as lied about his training and research affiliations. He was fired by the University of Tokyo.
Moriguchi is back, and now says that he has supercooled oocytes from women with cancer, used iPS cells to treat liver cancer, and, echoing his previous claims, transplanted cardiac cells derived from iPS cells into a patient with heart failure.
But, theNature News blog reports that it has found several discrepancies in the new papers that Moriguchi has published in BMJ Case Reports.
According to the Nature News Blog, one paper "seems to be a plagiarized version of a paper he retracted last autumn." Also, in a paper that describes a method of treating liver cancer using iPS cells, "it is unclear from the summary whether he claims to have already accomplished the feat or just achieved a proof of principle," the post adds.
In addition, the Nature News Blog says it cannot find Joren Madson, Moriguchi's co-author on the papers, nor can it confirm the existence of Reprogramming, a company both men are supposedly affiliated with.
Moriguchi tells Nature that he is currently in the hospital and unable to discuss his work at this time. In addition, BMJ Case Reports says it is looking into the papers.