Liu Y, Zhang B, Shi T, Qin H. Onco Targets Ther. 2017;10:1115–1122.
We, the Editors and Publisher of OncoTargets and Therapy, have retracted the following article.
Following publication of the article, concerns were raised about the duplication of images from Figures 2 and 3 with images from other unrelated articles. Specifically,
Western blot bands and the background from images in Figure 2D, have been duplicated with the bands and background for images from Figure 1B from Ren H, Qi Y, Yin X, Gao J. miR-136 targets MIEN1 and involves the metastasis of colon cancer by suppressing epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition. Onco Targets Ther. 2018;11:67–74. https://doi.org/10.2147/OTT.S113359.
Images from Figure 3C have been duplicated with images for Figure 2C from Zhou J, Dai W, Song J. miR-1182 inhibits growth and mediates the chemosensitivity of bladder cancer by targeting hTERT. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. 2016;470:445–452. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbrc.2016.01.014; Figure 3E and 6C from Niu JT, Zhang LJ, Huang YW, Li C, Jiang N, Niu YJ. MiR-154 inhibits the growth of laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma by targeting GALNT7. Biochemistry and Cell Biology. 2018;96(6):752-760. https://doi.org/10.1139/bcb-2018-0047; Figure 3E from He Y, Yang Y, Xu J, et al. IL22 drives cutaneous melanoma cell proliferation, migration and invasion through activation of miR-181/STAT3/AKT axis. Journal of Cancer. 2020;11(9): 2679–2687. https://doi.org/10.7150/jca.40974 and Figure 5D from Lin Y, Xu T, Zhou S, Cui M. MicroRNA-363 inhibits ovarian cancer progression by inhibiting NOB1. Oncotarget. 2017;8:101649–101658. https://www.oncotarget.com/article/21417/text/.
The authors did not respond to our queries and were unable to provide an explanation for the duplicated images or provide data for the study. As verifying the validity of published work is core to the integrity of the scholarly record, we are therefore retracting the article and the authors were notified of this.
We have been informed in our decision-making by our editorial policies and COPE guidelines.
The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.