A Russian scientist reportedly working on a coronavirus vaccine has been found dead with a stab wound outside a building in St. Louis. Petersburg, local authorities and media said in weekend.
The body of 45-year-old geneticist and molecular and cellular biologist Alexander Kagansky was found Saturday in the courtyard of a 16-story building. Fontanka.ru news site reported that he was visiting an old schoolmate for their birthday on the day of his death.
Russia’s investigative committee, which identified Kagansky only until his 1975 birth, said he had detained an unnamed 45-year-old suspect as part of a murder investigation.
The suspect denied stabbing Kagansky and claimed that the scientist injured himself, Fontanka.ru reported, citing unnamed sources.
Fontanka.ru added that the 45-year-old suspect, who was to be released on Monday after 48 hours in custody, should take a lie test. The news website Nevskiye Novosti identified Kagansky’s former classmate as a former employee of the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper, Igor Ivanov.
The outlet also reported that Kagansky, whose affiliations included the National Cancer Institute of Maryland and the University of Edinburgh, was recently working on a Covid-19 vaccine in Scotland.
The Federal University of the Far East in Vladivostok, where Kagansky headed the Center for Genomic and Regenerative Medicine at his School of Biomedicine, said deplores the death of an influential scientist whose papers have been published regularly in scientific journals worldwide.