Processing Your Payment

Please do not leave this page until complete. This can take a few moments.

March 4, 2021

Jackson Lab responds to FBI investigation of former Farmington employee

Photo | Contributed Jackson Laboratory’s 183,500-square-foot research facility is located on the campus of the UConn Health Center in Farmington.
By Laurie Schreiber, Mainebiz

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Department of Justice have been investigating Chinese collaborations of a scientist formerly at the Farmington facility of Jackson Laboratory, the biomedical research organization headquartered in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Yijun Ruan, formerly professor and director of genomic sciences at the lab’s Farmington facility, “has received, and possibly is continuing to receive” funding from Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan, China, and Shenzhen People’s Hospital in Shenzhen, China, while receiving research grants from the National Institutes of Health, according to an FBI affidavit filed Dec. 30 in Maine federal court.

Ruan was previously affiliated with both of the Chinese institutions, and his "close ties" to them could have made him ineligible for the grants, the affidavit said.

Ruan “failed to disclose material information to JAX, thereby causing JAX to submit materially false grant applications, Just-in-Time reports and other documents to NIH via the internet. These interstate wire communications facilitated Ruan’s scheme to defraud."

The affidavit asked the court to issue a search warrant, and the case was reported by the Bangor Daily News Tuesday night. Mainebiz received a statement from the lab Wednesday morning.

“While we cannot comment on an ongoing governmental investigation, JAX is fully cooperating with the FBI and DOJ, as we do with inquiries from any U.S government or U.S. regulatory agency," the statement read in part.

“Integral to our commitment to upholding the highest standards, JAX has policies and procedures in place to guide the ethical conduct of our scientific staff and how we share our research with other institutions, and works to ensure compliance with regulations and standards governing disclosure of external financial interests and sources of support for their research."

Ruan, a U.S. citizen, arrived at the Farmington site in 2012. His positions just prior to JAX were at the National University of Singapore and Genome Institute of Singapore, according to his curriculum vitae.

In the 1990s, he worked for Large Scale Biology Corp. and Monsanto Co. in the U.S.

Sign up for Enews

Most Recent

Most Recent

0 Comments

Order a PDF