Feds Investigate Emory Univ. Over Nemeroff

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that officials with the HHS inspector general's office are looking into questions of whether Emory University misled NIH about the work and consulting contracts of Charles Nemeroff, a professor of psychiatry there and recently removed as chair of the department.

"The probe by the inspector general for the Health and Human Services agency, which investigates fraud in NIH programs, concerns the work of Charles Nemeroff. From 2003 until last year, Dr. Nemeroff served as primary investigator on an NIH-funded research effort to study five GlaxoSmithKline PLC drugs for use as antidepressants. During that time, Dr. Nemeroff also received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Glaxo.

"A person familiar with the federal probe said investigators are examining whether Emory failed to tell the NIH about Dr. Nemeroff's potential conflicts of interest in conducting the research, and whether the university may have misrepresented the kind of work he did for Glaxo."

As I noted previously:

"Between 2000 and 2006, Nemeroff took in almost $1 million in consulting fees and whatnot from GlaxoSmithKline but copped to making less than $35,000 on university disclosure forms. And that's just for one company. Nemeroff was reportedly on the advisory boards of 12 pharma companies. He took in about $1.8 million between 2000 and 2007 from other companies for a total of $2.8 million. That works out to $400,000 a year."

If Emory is found to have violated NIH policies, the university could face a range of sanctions including losing its $251 million a year in NIH funding.