China’s Tongji University punishes top cancer researcher Wang Ping for misconduct

A top Chinese university has taken disciplinary action against its leading cancer researcher after finding academic misconduct in a 2025 Nature study.The study, which claimed that starving cancer cells of valine – a building block of proteins found in food – could trigger DNA damage and slow tumour growth, contained problematic data in 14 of its 15 figures, Shanghai-based Tongji University said in an official statement on Wednesday.The team, led by Wang Ping, dean of the School of Life Sciences and Technology, failed to “objectively count” total cells and damaged cells in 10 of those figures, while three contained duplicated image data and another involved non-standard recording of a mouse’s weight.