Cancer scientist disputes lawsuit
Researcher says she didn’t try to falsely take credit
A prominent MD Anderson Cancer Center scientist pushed back on a lawsuit that claims she tried to take credit for a junior faculty member’s research, saying a third-party review determined she should be acknowledged for her contributions, according to a Friday court filing.
The filing also says the lawsuit should be amended to remove Dr. Padmanee Sharma, a senior MD Anderson faculty member and a major figure in the field of immunotherapy, as a defendant. Sharma is an employee of a University of Texas System institution, and government employees are protected against lawsuits related to actions they take as part of their official duties, according to the court filing from Sharma’s attorneys with the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
The court filing says the researcher who filed the lawsuit, Dr. Jamie Lin, should amend it to name MD Anderson as the defendant rather than Sharma. If the change is not made within 30 days, the suit should be dismissed, the court filing says.
Lin’s suit, filed in August, accuses Sharma of improperly taking credit for research and making false and defamatory statements that damaged Lin’s career. Lin has asked for $5 million in damages and a judgment naming her to her appropriate authorship positions.
Sharma has denied the allegations in court documents, including in a declaration attached to Friday’s court filing.
“The conduct complained of by Dr. Lin — the merits and accuracy of which I vigorously dispute — are within the course and scope of my employment with MDACC and relate solely to my employment with MDACC,” she said in the filing.
Lin, an onco-nephrologist, said in a statement that she hadn’t reviewed the motion and was unable to comment by press time. Julie Haines, a member of Lin’s legal team, said she and her col
leagues were reviewing the motion. “We … are not surprised that defendant Sharma is trying to escape the consequences of her individual behavior.”
The lawsuit represents an unusual public clash at one of the leading cancer research hubs in the world. Sharma is a major figure in the field of immunotherapy, a type of treatment that helps a patient’s immune system fight cancer. She is married to Dr. James Allison, a Nobel Prize winner and the namesake of MD Anderson’s Allison Institute.
One of the manuscripts at the center of the dispute deals with tertiary lymphoid structures — clusters of immune cells that can develop in inflamed tissues. TLS is associated with conditions like autoimmune disorders, infections and cancer.
Lin’s complaint says her spouse, Dr. Cassian Yee, conceptualized the idea in November 2020 of a TLS signature in immune nephritis or kidney damage caused by the immunotherapy. In the complaint, Lin said she and her spouse led the research laid out in the paper. The research and findings are not detailed in court documents.
Sharma painted a different picture in the declaration she filed Friday.
Sharma said in the declaration that she used to be “close personal friends” with Lin and acted as a mentor to her. Starting in 2020, Lin wanted to develop a research project looking at kidney toxicities associated with immunotherapy, and collaborated with other researchers to collect and analyze kidney samples, according to the declaration. Lin asked for Sharma’s assistance, according to the declaration, and the senior researcher helped decipher the data.
Sharma said she had experience in this area of immunology, pointing to research she had previously published in the journals Nature Medicine and Nature to identify a signature for TLS. She also wrote that she has patented at least one application of TLS through MD Anderson’s Office of Technology Commercialization, according to the declaration.
In August 2021, Sharma learned that Lin intended to submit a manuscript to the journal Cancer Immunology Research, and that Sharma was not acknowledged as a contributor, according to the court filing. The following month, Sharma learned that Lin and Yee intended to submit a report to MD Anderson that indicated their interest in obtaining a patent for the TLS signature.
In the court filing, Sharma expressed her concerns about not being identified as a contributor to the research. It also says Sharma told Lin and Yee that she and two other MD Anderson colleagues should be named on documents that would help them obtain a patent.
After learning that Lin did not intend to give her credit for her role in the project, Sharma told Lin that she intended to contact CIR to inform them of a dispute about authorship, the court filing says. The journal eventually returned the manuscript because the dispute could not be resolved.
In Lin’s complaint, she accused Sharma of threatening her at the Santa Barbara Airport and demanding to be added to the manuscript as a senior corresponding author. She also accused Sharma of threatening to pull financial support for Lin’s research, and of making false and defamatory statements to CIR, court documents say.
In December 2022, Sharma learned that Lin and Yee planned to publish a second manuscript in the Journal of Clinical Investigation Insight. She emailed the journal to express concern that she and her colleague were not being given credit for their contributions, according to her declaration.
Lin’s complaint accused Sharma of emailing the journal editor and falsely accusing Lin of plagiarizing data, patient sources and research results.
The same month, MD Anderson hired outside counsel, Ropes and Grey LLP, to conduct a thirdparty review of the dispute. The review ultimately found that Sharma and other MD Anderson employees were entitled to attribution in the manuscripts, according to Friday’s court filing.
The court filing says Lin filed the lawsuit against Sharma because she was dissatisfied with the results of the review.