Texas state regulators are investigating the University of North Texas Health Science Center over its failure to notify surviving family members before cutting up and leasing out the bodies of their loved ones, following an NBC News investigation.

The center's failure to obtain permission from next of kin before using corpses for medical research — and its refusal to immediately release remains to survivors who came forward later — may have violated state law, a Texas Funeral Service Commission investigator wrote in an October letter to the center’s president, who has since resigned.