Fu X, Li H, Yang K, Chen D, Tang H. Onco Targets Ther. 2016;9:2237–2245.
The Editor and Publisher of OncoTargets and Therapy are retracting the published article. Concerns were raised regarding the alleged duplication of tumor images in Figure 4A with those from other articles by the same authors. Specifically,
The tumor images in Figure 4A appear to have been duplicated with those from Figure 5A from Li H, Fu X, Yang K, Chen D, Tang H, Zhao Q. The clock gene PER1 suppresses expression of tumor-related genes in human oral squamous cell carcinoma. Oncotarget. 2016;7:20574–20583. https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.7827; Figure 4A from Zhao Q, Zheng G, Yang K, et al. The clock gene PER1 plays an important role in regulating the clock gene network in human oral squamous cell carcinoma cells. Oncotarget. 2016;7:70290–70302. https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.11844 and Figure 6A from Su X, Chen D, Yang K, et al. The circadian clock gene PER2 plays an important role in tumor suppression through regulating tumor-associated genes in human oral squamous cell carcinoma. Oncology Reports. 2017;38:472–480. https://doi.org/10.3892/or.2017.5653.
In addition, the image from Figure 4C, SCC15 has been duplicated with the image from Figure 4D, Control-shRNA from Zhao Q et al (2016).
The authors responded to our queries but were unable to provide an explanation for the duplicated images nor were they able to provide the original data from their study. As the findings could not be verified the Editor and Publisher made the decision to retract the article and the authors were notified of this.
We have been informed in our decision-making by our editorial policies and the COPE guidelines.
The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.