A sweeping fraud investigation in China has led to prison sentences for multiple AstraZeneca executives, including Leon Wang, the company's former international chief, and has led to the implication of more than 100 of the company's employees, Highwire reported Friday.
The case centered around pushing fraudulent genetic testing to qualify patients for AstraZeneca's lung cancer drug Tagrisso.
In 2019, according to court documents, two AstraZeneca sales reps advocated for a partnership with Genowise Corp. Genowise Corp, a Chinese genetic testing company, would provide fake positive test results to qualify patients for AstraZeneca's lung cancer drug.
Chen Bin, AstraZeneca's East China sales director for oncology drugs, encouraged sales staff to send cancer patients' biopsy samples to "partnered genetic testing institutions" to "convert" the samples to test positive for the genetic mutation T790M.
The drug company's sales representatives and regional managers have admitted to altering the test results. The Chinese investigation has led to multiple decade-long prison sentences for senior-level employees and arrests of the executives and shareholders. Notably, 13% of the pharmaceutical company's revenue comes from China.