Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka, who heads a research institute for induced pluripotent stem cells at Kyoto University, is considering donating his salary to the facility to take responsibility for data fabrication in a paper by one of its researchers, sources have said.
The donation would continue for a certain period from this month, the sources said Thursday. Around ¥3.1 million ($28,400) was spent on the research paper, including more than ¥2 million allocated from the institute's fund that collects donations from the public.
Yamanaka, who won the 2012 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discovering iPS cells, apologized Monday while revealing "falsification and fabrication" in the paper published last year in the journal Stem Cell Reports.
According to the university, Kohei Yamamizu, a specially appointed assistant professor at the university's Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, falsified main figures in the paper that claimed he had used iPS cells to successfully generate a structure that functions as a blood-brain barrier.