Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff, one of the nation’s top psychiatric researchers, while working on government-funded drug research, violated federal research rules, by failing to report the $2-million paid to him by pharmaceutical firms, as per university documents furnished to congressional investigators.

The documents include a letter dated 15th July 2004 in which Nemeroff promises Emory administrators that he would comply with federal rules, earning less than $10,000 a year from GlaxoSmithKline.  However, Nemeroff, the primary investigator on a federally-funded research project conducted jointly by Emory, Glaxo and the National Institute of Mental Health was actually paid $170,000 by Glaxo for talks on Paxil and for examining five Glaxo drugs under consideration as possible antidepressants.

According to federal research rules, universities are supposed to closely monitor researchers receiving government grants, informing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) when researchers drug companies pay more than $10,000 in annual income, even as the nation’s leading researchers are asked to provide conflict of interest disclosures for comparison with actual pay-offs drug companies give them.

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), leading the probe where researchers’ disclosures do not match drug company records, has also found discrepancies at Harvard, Brown and Stanford universities.  
Exposing Nemeroff in a letter to James W. Wagner, President of Emory, Grassley states that from 2000 through 2006, Dr. Nemeroff received just over $960,000 from Glaxo, but only reported $35,000 to the university.  As such, Emory was responsible for dealing with the conflict or for removing Nemeroff as investigator.

However, Emory despite investigating Nemeroff in 2004 and submitting a report that detailed multiple seriously significant violations of university procedures intended to protect patients, took no action against Nemeroff, who at the time had consulting arrangements with over twelve companies, including Merck & Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Eli Lilly & Co., nor did it question or submit his financial ties with drug companies to further scrutiny.

This is not the first time Dr. Nemeroff’s ethics have been called in question.  In 2006 he was made to step down as editor of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, for failing to reveal he and other co-authors had financial ties with Cyberonics, manufacturer of a controversial device they reviewed favourably in a journal he edited.

After Grassley’s letter to Emory’s president was made public on Friday, the university had no option but ask Nemeroff to voluntarily relinquish his post of Deptt. Chairman, effective immediately, till such time as the issues are resolved.