MD Anderson researcher charged with taking cancer data to China

A Chinese researcher employed at the MD Anderson Cancer Center was arrested July 9 at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston after authorities said he attempted to carry U.S. funded cancer research to China. Officials with the Harris County District Attorney's Office said 35 year old Yunhai Li was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection during an inspection of his electronic devices ahead of a flight, and investigators found unpublished research and confidential files they describe as trade secrets stored on a Chinese cloud server.

Prosecutors and court documents say Li, who began working at MD Anderson in 2022 on a State Department research scholar exchange visa, had been involved in work on a vaccine intended to prevent the spread of breast cancer. The project received funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense, the district attorney's office said. According to court filings, Li uploaded sensitive material to his personal Google Drive while employed at the cancer center and, when confronted by the institution, deleted those files and provided proof of the deletion. Investigators later discovered the same material had been...