Moffitt's top basic-science leader steps down as journals flag her earlier work
Elsa Flores gives up two leadership posts after her former employer reviewed studies she co-authored in Texas — research that has drawn retractions and image-integrity warnings.
Tampa Bay - One of the scientists who shapes the research agenda at Tampa’s H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center has relinquished her leadership roles after several studies she co-authored were either retracted or flagged by journals over questions about the integrity of their images, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Elsa R. Flores has stepped down as division chief and associate center director of basic science, according to an email sent to senior Moffitt staff. The note characterized the move as a personal decision and said she will stay on as a senior member of the Department of Molecular Oncology, where she will concentrate on running her own lab.
Until the change, Flores had sat near the top of Moffitt’s research hierarchy. Her institutional profile describes her as overseeing five academic departments in the Division of Basic Science and lists a long run of honors, including an NCI Outstanding Investigator award and an endowed chair. She is internationally known for her work on the p53 family of tumor-suppressor genes.
The resignation followed a retrospective review by her previous employer, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where Flores spent years as a professor before moving to Tampa. That review examined a number of papers she worked on while in Houston — papers that critics had already been picking apart in online forums, arguing that some of the images used to support the findings appeared to have been altered.
Those concerns have left a visible trail in the scientific literature. In 2024, Nature attached an editorial expression of concern to a influential 2002 paper Flores co-authored on how p63 and p73 contribute to programmed cell death, warning readers that questions had been raised about the integrity of some of the data. Separately, PLOS Genetics retracted a 2009 study on DNA-repair genes after editors found problems across multiple figure panels; the retraction notice indicates Flores did not agree with the decision. A 2019 paper in PLOS ONE drew its own expression of concern over reused western-blot images.
Moffitt declined to address specific questions about Flores, the Times reported, but said in a statement that the center holds its research to the highest integrity standards and relies on established oversight and compliance systems.
The case was reported by Christopher O’Donnell, an investigative reporter at the Tampa Bay Times.
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