The Jikei University School of Medicine has become the second Japanese university to find that clinical data had been manipulated for a Novartis Pharma drug that lowers blood pressure.
A guest professor, Seibu Mochizuki, who led Jikei's research on the drug called Diovan, is offering to withdraw his paper on the drug that was published in the Lancet medical journal in 2007, noting grave doubts have emerged about the credibility of the research.
The development came after the Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine announced in mid-July it had found manipulation of clinical research data on Diovan.