Shanghai Fires Two Researchers After Girl Dies in Gene-Editing Trial

A municipal task force said Friday that Qiu Zilong, deputy director of the Songjiang Research Institute at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, and Yang Kan, a lead researcher on his team, have been dismissed and barred for five years from government science projects and awards.

Their names were also entered into China’s research-integrity blacklist, state media reported.

The girl, who was six, had been diagnosed with Snijders Blok-Campeau syndrome, a rare neurodevelopmental condition for which investigators said no effective treatment exists.

Family Sought a Custom Therapy

Her family contacted Qiu in July 2023 to request a customized gene-editing treatment, the task force said.

Qiu’s group carried out the preclinical work. Companies in Guangdong and Sichuan provinces prepared viral vectors and ran large-animal safety tests.

Xinhua Hospital’s ethics committee approved the clinical study in January 2025. The girl received the injection in March and died on March 31.

The hospital determined that the cause was thrombotic microangiopathy, a complication of the gene therapy.

Science and Retraction Watch, whose July report prompted the inquiry, wrote that a hospital ethics panel later called the death “definitely related” to the spinal-fluid infusion.

The experimental treatment used viruses to deliver a gene-editing tool, an approach that has also drawn safety questions in other laboratory genetic research.

Investigators Cite Safety Lapses

The task force found that Qiu’s team and hospital staff had not strictly followed the rules.

Researchers failed to promptly report safety findings from the animal tests. Later reporting said concerning primate results were not shared with the girl’s doctors beforehand.

The hospital approved the study without adequate toxicology and safety evidence, investigators said, and judged the scientific and ethics reviews insufficient.

Informed consent was also found to be defective. Official findings, as reported in state media, said the risk of death was not clearly highlighted to her parents.

Payments, Paper and Penalties

Some personnel accepted about 1.06 million yuan, or roughly $159,000, in money and gifts from the family, which investigators said have been returned.

The South China Morning Post reported that the gifts included liquor and electronic devices.

The team published a related paper in Nature in February 2026 that did not disclose the child’s death or negative results. Investigators found no data fabrication but cited academic irregularities and undisclosed conflicts of interest.

Several other officials, including the trial’s clinical lead at Xinhua Hospital, a doctor surnamed Yu, were removed from their posts or demoted.

The medical school, Xinhua Hospital and Songjiang District Central Hospital were summoned and ordered to make corrections, and related medical institutions received administrative penalties.

Shanghai’s health commission has started a special inspection of clinical research involving new biomedical technologies, including gene therapies.