At the request of Sage Publishing and the Managing Editor, the following article has been retracted:
Xiao Y, Zhang Y, Li Y, et al. Exosomes Derived From Mesenchymal Stem Cells Pretreated With Ischemic Rat Heart Extracts Promote Angiogenesis via the Delivery of DMBT1. Cell Transplantation. 2022;31. doi:10.1177/09636897221102898
Sage was notified of a PubPeer post that highlights concerns in two figures in this article:
In Figure 5B, the DMBT1 panel appears highly similar to Figure 4C DMBT1 panel lane 4 and 5 after 180-degree rotation
In Figure 5B, the STAT3 panel appears highly similar to the second lane of the IL22RA1 panel after 180-degree rotation.
The authors have explained these errors occurred due to accidents while editing the images.
The authors have provided images underlying Figure 4C and 5B for investigation, but these images do not meet our criteria of raw, unedited images of the experiments conducted.
Due to uncertainty around the integrity of the original images that call into question the validity of the findings, the Managing Editor retracts this article.
Y.X. disagrees with the retraction. All other authors did not respond when notified of this decision.