Key facts
- Shanghai authorities released investigation findings on November 13, 2026, citing failures in safety testing, ethics review and disclosure.
- Qiu Zilong was deputy director of the Songjiang research institute at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, per the primary report.
- Investigators found no evidence of data fabrication in the Nature paper but identified academic irregularities, the attached reports said.
- The family provided 5.337 million yuan (about $800,000) in research funding and gave cash and gifts worth about 1.06 million yuan, per the reports.
- Xinhua Hospital's ethics committee approved the study despite insufficient toxicological and safety evidence, the attached reports said.
- Shanghai authorities launched special inspections of clinical research into new biomedical technologies, the attached reports said.
Shanghai authorities dismissed the lead researcher behind an experimental gene-editing treatment and barred him for five years from science programs and research awards, after an investigation into a six-year-old girl's death found failures in safety testing, ethics review and disclosure. The findings were released on November 13, 2026, according to the primary report.
Qiu Zilong, deputy director of the Songjiang research institute at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, was the researcher dismissed, the primary report said. Attached reports by Global Times and City News Service said two researchers surnamed Qiu and Yang were dismissed and barred for five years from undertaking or participating in science and technology programs and from receiving awards and honors, and were placed in a database of serious research integrity violations. Other personnel received disciplinary penalties and the involved hospitals were subjected to administrative penalties.
The child had Snijders Blok-Campeau syndrome, a rare neurodevelopmental disorder with no effective treatment, the attached reports said. The family approached the Songjiang Research Institute in July 2023 seeking a customized gene-editing therapy targeting the central nervous system. Xinhua Hospital's ethics committee approved the clinical study on January 2, 2025, the family signed an informed consent form on February 20, and the child received an injection on March 24, 2025, and died on March 31, 2025 despite resuscitation efforts.
At an emergency review on April 2, 2025, the hospital's ethics committee concluded the death was caused by thrombotic microangiopathy, a complication of the gene therapy, and ordered the study to stop, according to the attached reports. The team's paper was published in Nature on February 18, 2026.
Investigators found the preclinical team led by Qiu did not strictly follow rules and procedures, and failed to promptly inform the hospital's clinical study leader of safety findings from non-human primate experiments, leaving warning signals unheeded, the attached reports said, citing CCTV News. The team also did not promptly disclose the non-human primate safety report completed in February 2025, or the child's death, when publishing the paper.
Investigators found no evidence of data fabrication in the Nature paper but identified academic irregularities, including inconsistencies between the methods used and those reported and unexplained presentation of data from the same batch in multiple stages. Xinhua Hospital's ethics committee approved the study despite insufficient toxicological and safety evidence and the team's failure to supply requested supplementary materials, and the consent form did not specifically emphasize the risk of death, the reports said.
The family provided 5.337 million yuan (about $800,000) in research funding through donations and gave cash and gifts worth approximately 1.06 million yuan to several individuals involved in the research, which have since been returned or turned over, according to the attached reports. Shanghai authorities also launched special inspections of clinical research into new biomedical technologies.