The inside story of how data integrity issues roiled a biotech seen as ‘Moderna 2.0’

In February 2022, Diego Miralles, then-CEO of a buzzy new biotech called Laronde, gathered his employees in the company’s shiny new Somerville, Mass., headquarters to relay some unsettling news.

An internal investigation had uncovered a “bad assay” and poor note-taking in some of the core research being conducted at the company, Miralles told Laronde’s roughly 130 staffers. The incident was serious, he said, and the company needed to learn from it.

Though couched in careful language, his meaning was clear: There was a problem with some of Laronde’s key preclinical data.

It felt, one former staff member recalled, like all of the air had been sucked out of the room.

Miralles said one person was responsible for the issue, and though he didn’t say who, employees quickly connected the dots: Laronde had recently parted ways with one of its veteran scientists, a woman named Catherine Cifuentes-Rojas.

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