Zhou L, Wu H, Gao X, et al. Drug Des Devel Ther. 2020;14:3519—3533.
We, the Editors and Publisher of the journal Drug Design, Development and Therapy have retracted the published article.
Following publication, concerns have been raised in 2025 by a third party about the integrity of the data in Figure 4 of the article.
Further investigations conducted by the Journal and Publisher confirmed unexpected similarities in the image panels representative of different treatment conditions in Figure 4. When approached for an explanation, the authors have provided their raw data for Figure 4. However, further data integrity concerns were identified in the Western blot shown in Figure 8B; the authors were unable to provide the Western blot raw data due to the time that has elapsed since the experiments were conducted.
As verifying the validity of published work is core to the integrity of the scholarly record, we are therefore retracting the article. The corresponding author listed in this publication has been informed.
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The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as ‘Retracted’.