“The President of the Karolinska Institute (KI) has today decided that researcher Paolo Macchiarini's employment should not be extended when it expires,” read a statement on its website on Thursday.
It added that the celebrity surgeon, famed for his pioneering use of stem cells in regenerative surgery, had been told to use the period up until November 30th, when his contract runs out, to dismantle his research team at the prestigious Stockholm hospital.
Macchiarini's career has been tainted by a series of controversies in recent years, which came to a head when Swedish public broadcaster SVT last month produced a documentary shedding new light on some of his procedures.
He rose to fame in 2011 for carrying out the first synthetic organ transplant, making a trachea – or windpipe – from plastic, and using it as a frame into which the patient’s own stem cells could then grow.
Macchiarini told Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet earlier this week that the accusations against him were “false” but that he would not comment further until after the investigations had concluded.