University of Wisconsin cancer researcher Minesh Mehta resigns amid conflict of interest investigation
Wisconsin State Journal
August 4, 2010
A prominent UW-Madison cancer researcher has abruptly resigned after university officials began investigating a potential conflict of interest involving his outside business interests.
The case involving Dr. Minesh Mehta, an internationally recognized expert on human clinical cancer trials, comes amid heightened national scrutiny of doctors' ties to industry and the university's own attempts to better monitor such relationships.
In April, the UW-Madison committee responsible for protecting the rights and welfare of participants in research studies became aware of a potential conflict involving Mehta and his paid consulting work with TomoTherapy Inc., a Madison company that makes cancer treatment devices, according to documents obtained by the State Journal through an open records request.
For most of the last decade, Mehta has been the lead researcher of a federally funded clinical trial of a specialized radiation treatment for cancer patients known generically as tomotherapy. The device used to administer the radiation to a majority of participants in the study is made by TomoTherapy.
