The Paolo Macchiarini scandal at the Karolinska Institutet has prompted Urban Lendahl, secretary general of the Nobel Assembly, to resign.

Lendahl, a developmental geneticist at KI, was involved in hiring Macchiarini in 2010. A statement from the Nobel Committee yesterday said that Lendahl expected to be involved in the investigation and was giving up his work on the committee “out of respect for the integrity of the Nobel Prize work.”

KI announced last week that it had “lost confidence” in Macchiarini  and would cut ties with him when his current contract as a senior research ends in November. It also said it would launch an external investigation into the university’s interactions with Maccharini since his hiring as a guest professor in 2010.

Lendahl has been a member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute since 2000. He was elected as secretary general in late 2014 and assumed office in early 2015. His resignation is an indirect result of The Experiments, a documentary that aired in January on Swedish public television station SVT and that led to KI’s decision to cut ties with Macchiarini. The documentary also cast doubt on KI’s investigation into Macchiarini’s work.

Read more about the documentary and the Macchiarini scandal here.

Photo Erik Cronberg