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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A former Iowa State University researcher pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to making false statements about a potential HIV vaccine in research reports.
A judge accepted the terms of a plea agreement Dong-Pyou Han signed with federal prosecutors in January. He had been charged with four counts of making false statements but pleaded guilty to two, as prosecutors agreed to drop the other two.
Han faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000. He also may be required to make restitution to the federal government, which has provided grants of around $12 million for the research.
According to an indictment filed in June in U.S. District Court in Des Moines, Han's misconduct dates to when he worked at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland under professor Michael Cho, who was leading a team testing an experimental HIV vaccine on rabbits.
Starting in 2008, Cho's team received more than $7 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, and he soon reported the vaccine was causing rabbits to develop antibodies to HIV, which was considered a major breakthrough.
Iowa State recruited Cho in 2009, and his team — including Han — received another $6.8 million five-year grant to continue the research. The team reported progress until a group of researchers at Harvard University found in January 2013 the promising results had been achieved with rabbit blood spiked with human antibodies.
An ISU investigation pinpointed Han, who then wrote in a confession letter dated Sept. 30, 2013, that he started the fraud in 2009 "because he wanted (results) to look better" and acted alone. After the faked results were discovered, the NIH decided last year to withhold the final $1.4 million grant payment.
ISU agreed to repay the government $496,000 for Han's salary and other costs tied to his employment at the school. Han may not apply for or receive grants from the U.S. government for three years, the NIH said, but Cho's team and other researchers at ISU can.
Han, 57, a native of South Korea, remains free on bond awaiting sentencing, which was set for May 29.
His attorney did not immediately respond to a message.
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