Li J, Qiu C, Xu P, Lu Y, Chen RC. Drug Des Devel Ther. 2020;14:5019–5027.
We, the Editors and Publisher of the journal Drug Design, Development and Therapy, have retracted the published article.
After publication, concerns have been raised in 2025 by a third party about the integrity of the data in Figure 7 of the article. The authors subsequently contacted the Journal and requested the retraction of the article.
Further investigations conducted by the Journal and Publisher confirmed unexpected similarities in the Western blot data shown in Figure 7A and the Western blot data reported by an unrelated author group that is representative of different treatment conditions, and has now been retracted:
Shi CX, Jin J, Wang XQ, et al. Sevoflurane attenuates brain damage through inhibiting autophagy and apoptosis in cerebral ischemia-reperfusion rats. Mol Med Rep. 2020;21:123-130. https://doi.org/10.3892/mmr.2019.10832
When approached for an explanation, the authors have explained that they are unable to provide the Western blot raw data due to the time that has elapsed since the experiments were conducted, and requested retraction of the article. As the Editor and Publisher also have concerns about the integrity of the reported results, we are retracting the article to ensure correction of the scholarly record.
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The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as ‘Retracted’.