A top breast cancer researcher has continually failed to disclose potential conflicts of interest in his research after receiving millions of dollars from drug and healthcare companies, according to a report from Pro Publica and The New York Times.
José Baselga, PhD, chief medical officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, has been a key part of developing breakthrough drugs for breast cancer treatment. Memorial Sloan Kettering, one of the nation’s top cancer centers, paid Baselga more than $1.5 million in 2016, not including consulting or board fees from other companies.
When it came to relaying financial disclosures in his research, Baselga did not follow rules by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), leaving out payments he received from companies connected to cancer research in published articles in the association’s journal, Cancer Discovery. He has also served as one of two editors-in-chief of the journal. The disclosure rules were set while he was president of the association.
Since 2014, he received more than $3 million for consulting work he did for Roche Holding AG, a pharmaceutical company, and for his stake in a company that it acquired, according to the report. Without disclosing his ties to the company, Baselga has gone on the record defending two Roche-sponsored clinical trials “that many others considered disappointments,” the report reads.
He has since said the lack of disclosures was unintentional. The situation highlights what is likely a bigger industry problem.
“Baselga’s extensive corporate relationships—and his frequent failure to disclose them–illustrate how permeable the boundaries remain between academic research and industry, and how weakly reporting requirements are enforced by the medical journals and professional societies charged with policing them,” the report reads.
Penalties for failures to disclose are not much, though authors can face up to a three-year ban on publishing if they are caught by the AACR. But many publications simply require authors to self-report, without checking conflicts.
In 2017, Baselga did not list any potential conflicts of interest in 87 percent of the articles he wrote or co-wrote, the NY Times and Pro Publica found.
As a result of the NY Times and Pro Publica’s reporting, Baselga has stated he would correct 17 articles with proper conflict-of-interest disclosures, including in The New England Journal of Medicine, Cancer Discovery and the Lancet. He has received nearly $3.5 million from nine companies from 2013 to 2017, public records indicate.
“While I have been inconsistent with disclosures and acknowledge that fact, that is a far cry from compromising my responsibilities as a physician, as a scientist and as a clinical leader,” he said in a statement.
While some ethicists have sounded off on financial ties between researchers and businesses, some overlap can be considered good.
“After all, these are the companies charged with developing the drugs, medical devices and diagnostics tests of the future,” the report states.
The federal government only began requiring public disclosures of payments to doctors in 2013. However, reporting typically relies on the honor system. One recent study in JAMA Oncology found that one-third of authors in a sample of cancer trials did not report all their payments from sponsors.
Amy joined TriMed Media as a Senior Writer for HealthExec after covering home care for three years. When not writing about all things healthcare, she fulfills her lifelong dream of becoming a pirate by sailing in regattas and enjoying rum. Fun fact: she sailed 333 miles across Lake Michigan in the Chicago Yacht Club "Race to Mackinac."