Russian scientist working on COVID-19 vaccine plummets to death

December 20, 2020 | 1:28pm | Updated December 21, 2020 | 7:56am

Sign up for our special edition newsletter to get a daily update on the coronavirus pandemic.

A prominent Russian scientist who was working on a COVID-19 vaccine was found dead with a stab wound after plummeting out his window in St. Petersburg, according to news reports.

Alexander “Sasha” Kagansky, 45, was in his underwear when he fell to his death from his 14th-floor apartment, according to the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets.

The scientist also suffered a stab wound, police said.

Police believe there was a scuffle before Kagansky fell from the building, reports said.

Russian police say they are investigating Kagansky’s death as a possible homicide and questioning a 45-year-old man as a potential suspect, e2news.com said.

Kagansky, best known for his work on cancer research, was an assistant professor in Vladivostok and had spent 13 years working in Edinburgh, Scotland, until 2017, the outlet said.

He was most recently working as director of the Center for Genomic and Regenerative Medicine at Russia’s Far Eastern Federal University.

He had been working on developing a vaccine against the coronavirus, e2news said.

Kagansky’s body was found by a neighbor on Zamshin Street, the report said.