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. 2024 Jan 29;16(2):191. doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics16020191

RETRACTED: Awan et al. The Enhanced Cytotoxic and Pro-Apoptotic Effects of Optimized Simvastatin-Loaded Emulsomes on MCF-7 Breast Cancer Cells. Pharmaceutics 2020, 12, 597

Zuhier A Awan 1, Usama A Fahmy 2,3, Shaimaa M Badr-Eldin 2,4, Tarek S Ibrahim 5, Hani Z Asfour 6, Mohammed W Al-Rabia 6, Anas Alfarsi 2, Nabil A Alhakamy 2,3,7,8, Wesam H Abdulaal 9, Hadeel Al Sadoun 10, Nawal Helmi 11,12, Ahmad O Noor 13, Filippo Caraci 14,15, Diena M Almasri 13, Giuseppe Caruso 14,*
PMCID: PMC10893105  PMID: 38399353

The journal retracts the article, “The Enhanced Cytotoxic and Pro-Apoptotic Effects of Optimized Simvastatin-Loaded Emulsomes on MCF-7 Breast Cancer Cells” [1], cited above.

Following publication, concerns were brought to the attention of the publisher regarding a range of image issues.

Adhering to our complaint’s procedure, an investigation was conducted by the Editorial Office and the Editorial Board that confirmed the presence of Figure 4 in two prior publications [2,3]. Furthermore, Figure 8 (panel B) was also confirmed to be similar to some images from other publications [4,5,6,7,8,9], and Figure 7A,B is similar to the images from another paper [7].

While the authors fully cooperated with the Editorial Office during the investigation, they were unable to satisfactorily explain the similarity of the figures presenting different experimental conditions, nor meet the required quality standards of raw images in order to consider a correction, as per the journals original image requirements policy (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/pharmaceutics/instruc-tions#oriimages). As a result, the Editorial Board and EIC were unable to confirm the reliability of the findings and subsequently decided to retract this paper.

This retraction was approved by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Pharmaceutics.

The authors did not agree to this retraction.

Footnotes

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References

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