Watchdog group demands termination of Oakland University researcher for mishandling dangerous toxin

A national watchdog group is calling for the termination of an Oakland University researcher accused of violating federal laws and regulations by repeatedly mishandling a dangerous toxin that can damage DNA.

Stop Animal Exploitation Now! (SAEN), a national watchdog group that investigates animal abuse and illegal activities at research facilities, said the researcher Amany Tawfik caused the deaths of mice and exposed staff by mishandling streptozotocin (STZ), a genotoxin.

In a letter to Oakland University president Ora Hirsch Pescovitz on Tuesday, SAEN executive director Michale Budkie said Tawfik questioned why the principal investigator (PI) has been permitted to continue working at the university.

“I fail to understand why a respected university would continue to employ a PI who has violated federal regulations repeatedly, endangered university staff, and unnecessarily killed animals out of negligence connected to failing to follow their own approved protocol,” Budkie wrote in the letter.

According to a letter to federal regulators in September 2023, David A. Stone, the university’s vice president for research, said research staff injected three mice with STZ on Aug. 2, 2023, and returned the animals to a holding room without notifying personnel that the mice had been treated with the genotoxin. A cage housing the mice did not have the required filter top, and the “animal room was deemed contaminated.”

Five days later, one of the mice was dead, and the other two were dying. They were then euthanized.

The violations invalidated the federally funded research, Budkie said.

The university’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee called the violations “serious” and said the researcher had failed to follow proper procedures when handling the genotoxin in the past. The researcher was also accused of a pattern to properly train staff.

Nevertheless, the university allowed the researcher to continue working on the project.

“This PI must be fired, the project must be permanently ended, and any unused funding must be returned to the federal government,” Budkie wrote. “Any other action would be a permanent stain on the reputation of Oakland University.”

Budkie suggested the university failed to take action because it was receiving more than $360,000 in federal funding a year.

“The only conclusion that I can draw is that Oakland University is desperate for federal funding, and that funding is being put above both the safety of lab staff, and following federal regulations,” Budkie said.

In a written statement, Oakland University said it followed the proper channels after “a mistake” was made.

“When a mistake is made in any lab research project, you report it, you explain it and you fix it so that the project can continue,” the statement read. “The Oakland University Research Department confirmed this press release resulted from an incident in one of our research labs involving three mice, and our letter reporting it, last fall. We followed research protocol by alerting the government as required to explain and provide details. Per protocol, the project was suspended until the student could be retrained to ensure they followed proper procedure. The project then resumed.”

SAEN has also sounded the alarm about research violations at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University.