Grant Rodgers

The Des Moines Register

DES MOINES, Iowa — A former Iowa State University scientist who admitted faking lab results to obtain millions in grant money for AIDS research has been charged with four felony counts of making false statements, an indictment filed in federal court shows.

Dr. Dong Pyou Han left his job as an assistant professor and a laboratory manager at the university last year after admitting that he spiked rabbit blood with human antibodies that made it appear the animals' immune systems were reacting to an AIDS vaccine being tested. In reality, the vaccine was having little effect, according to Han's indictment.

Before the fraud was detected, the research was hailed as groundbreaking, according to the federal indictment.

"I am very ashamed myself about my misconduct," Han wrote in a two-page letter littered with grammar errors in September that announced his resignation. "My misconduct is not done in order to hurt someone. All cause by my foolishness and are my faulty and responsibility."

At the time, Han agreed to be banned from federally financed research for three years.

The federal charges filed by Nicholas Klinefeldt, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, each carry a sentence of up to five years in prison. Han was arrested Monday and appeared before a magistrate judge in Ohio before being released.

Han is scheduled to appear Tuesday at the federal courthouse here.

"These cases are important for the integrity of the system," Klinefeldt said Thursday. "This is important research. There's a lot of research money at stake here."

In December, James Bradac, who helps oversee AIDS vaccine research grants for the National Institutes of Health, said this was the worst case of research fraud he'd seen in his 24 years at the federal agency.

Han managed the laboratory and conducted research at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, under Michael Cho as part of a team working to find a vaccine for the HIV/AIDS virus. The pair previously had done research at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland before moving to Iowa State in 2009.

Cho is co-director of Center for Advanced Host Defense Immunobiotics and Translational Comparative Medicine at the university. Cho's and Han's research had been awarded $19 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health.

The indictment came after calls from at least one professor and ethics expert for Han to be prosecuted. The case prompted Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to question whether the government would ever be able to recoup any of the grant money awarded as a result of Han's fraud.