Dreams of fame and fortune turned into a nightmare for a once-renowned Italian surgeon who compared himself to Doctor Frankenstein and now stands accused of using patients as guinea pigs.

Sweden's Karolinska Institute, which awards the Nobel Prize for Medicine, fired Paolo Macchiarini last week after years of controversy.

A pioneer in regenerative medicine, Macchiarini was born in Switzerland in 1958 and won international renown in 2008 after undertaking a grafted windpipe transplant using stem cells.