By Goldie Blumenstyk

Technology-transfer deals at universities can easily go sour, but rarely do they end up with the corporate partner suing an inventor and his institution for research fraud.

The University of Pittsburgh and the Johns Hopkins University now find themselves in that unusual situation, as a company that says it spent millions of dollars sponsoring research by a prominent scientist, expecting to use his promising inventions as the basis for a new test for prostate cancer, is now accusing the professor and the institutions of falsifying his results.

The company, Onconome Inc., says the professor, Robert H. Getzenberg, lied about his findings and progress from 2001 through 2008. Mr. Getzenberg has been a professor of urology and director of research at a urology institute at Johns Hopkins since 2005; previously he held similar posts at Pitt. He was also a paid scientific adviser to Onconome.

Onconome, of Redmond, Wash., was founded in 2001 to turn Mr. Getzenberg's work into a cancer-detection test. In addition to financing some of Mr. Getzenberg's research, the company had obtained licenses from Pitt and Johns Hopkins for rights to commercialize his research. It says it spent more than $13-million supporting the research and on licensing fees.

A Company's Suspicions

As recently as 2007—when Johns Hopkins issued a news release about a study Mr. Getzenberg published in the journal Urology that suggested his work could produce a better test for prostate cancer than the existing PSA test—there were no obvious signs of trouble.

At the time, however, a writer familiar with the biotechnology industry wrote a commentary questioning the wisdom of John Hopkins's decision to issue a news release about such preliminary work, noting that the university's reputation might have given the study more prominence than it would have otherwise received if only Onconome had publicized it.

According to separate lawsuits filed by Onconome against Johns Hopkins and against Pitt, the company soon after that began to suspect Mr. Getzenberg's findings because they couldn't be replicated by other scientists. Onconome, which says investors put money into the company because they believed in Mr. Getzenberg's findings, is seeking repayment of its money and other damages.

Mr. Getzenberg did not return telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment. Officials at Pitt said they had not yet been served with the lawsuit, which was filed just days ago in federal court in Pittsburgh, and declined to comment.

Johns Hopkins also declined to comment. But it has filed a answer to the lawsuit, which was filed in state court in July. In its answer, the university cites a number of defenses, including one that seeks to bar Onconome's claims because of its "fraud" on the university, on Mr. Getzenberg, or both. It also says all research was conducted in conformity with scientific standards.