Disgraced Duke doctor Potti no longer at Coastal Cancer Center

Dr. Anil Potti – the once-celebrated oncologist whose career faltered after the discovery that he fabricated cancer-treatment data for clinical trials at Duke University – has left Myrtle Beach-based Coastal Cancer Center in the wake of a “60 Minutes” television news report this month about his tenure at the N.C. university.

“A recent 60 Minutes story concerning an investigation of Duke University’s cancer research programs and Dr. Potti’s work there prompted many concerned people to contact Coastal Cancer Center with comments and questions,” Lawrence Holt, president of Coastal Cancer Center, said in a news release issued Wednesday afternoon. “It has become obvious that this issue is going to take precious focus away from patient care.”

Holt said Potti’s last day at the clinic was Tuesday. He joined Coastal Cancer Center in March 2011, about four months after resigning from Duke University in Durham, N.C., following revelations there that he had falsified research that purportedly could have matched cancer treatments to an individual’s DNA. Potti primarily worked at Coastal Cancer Center’s facilities in Loris and Brunswick County, N.C.

Holt said letters of recommendation from Potti’s colleagues at Duke played a key role in his hiring at Coastal Cancer Center.

“We received glowing references about Dr. Potti’s character and skills from the highest ranks of the Duke University School of Medicine and Duke University Medical Center,” Holt said. “We were assured by Duke Medical’s leaders that Anil was ‘outstanding in all categories,’ ‘had excellent clinical skills’ and that he had conducted himself at Duke with ‘honesty, integrity and humility’.”

In the end, however, concerns expressed by patients led the center to sever its ties with Potti, Holt said.

Potti claimed five years ago that he had discovered a way to match cancer treatments to a patient’s DNA, a breakthrough that would ensure a greater treatment success rate, according to the “60 Minutes” television show and numerous newspaper articles and medical journals that have chronicled Potti’s career.

Duke University conducted three clinical trials based on Potti’s research. Those trials were halted in 2010 when it became clear that Potti had fabricated much of his research data. Potti and the university are being sued by at least eight patients – or their estates – who took part in the clinical trials and Potti has retracted nine academic articles about the research that were published in medical journals.

Potti could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Potti called the fraudulent research at Duke University “a past controversy” in a letter he sent last year to the S.C. medical board with his license application.

Following his resignation at Duke, Potti also hired a firm that specializes in creating positive websites for customers to crowd out negative information that might come up during an Internet search. Potti’s biography on the Coastal Cancer Center website had no mention of the controversy. His biography had been removed from the center’s website on Wednesday.

Potti has had other problems in North Carolina in addition to the manipulated research data. He claimed to be a Rhodes Scholar on his resume at Duke University, which university officials later learned was false.

The N.C. Medical Board reprimanded Potti in December for including multiple inaccuracies about awards he purportedly won and other accomplishments on his resume and Duke University biography. The N.C. board’s website also shows Potti had 11 malpractice claims filed against him between November 2007 and June 2009 and that he is the focus of a medical research misconduct inquiry by Duke University.

Holt, however, called Potti’s work at the cancer center “exemplary” in the news release.

“During the time that Dr. Potti has been with us, he has been an exemplary physician whose caring ways have made him extremely popular with patients,” Holt said. “We will miss him.”

Holt and other Coastal Cancer Center physicians will assume the care of Potti’s patients.