Retraction—Cardiac stem cells in patients with ischaemic cardiomyopathy (SCIPIO): initial results of a randomised phase 1 trial

Following a communication from Harvard Medical School in 2014, we published an Expression of Concern¹ about the above-referenced SCIPIO trial.² We promised to inform readers when further investigations were complete.¹ The results of these investigations persuade us that the laboratory work undertaken by Piero Anversa and colleagues at Harvard cannot be held to be reliable. Specifically, there are issues with the data presented in figures 2 and 3 and in supplemental figures 2 and 3. SCIPIO was a collaboration between Anversa’s laboratory in Boston, MA, USA, and Roberto Bolli’s team in Louisville, KY, USA. Anversa’s laboratory isolated, expanded, and characterised the c-kit positive cells, which were then shipped to Louisville, where they were administered to patients and all the clinical work was done. The Louisville team was not involved with the manufacturing and characterisation of c-kit positive cells. Although we do not have any reservations about the clinical work in Louisville that used the preparations from Anversa’s laboratory in good faith, the lack of reliability regarding the laboratory work at Harvard means that we are now retracting this paper.