MEDICAL SCIENCES Retraction for “Identification of a coronary vascular progenitor cell in the human heart,” by Claudia Bearzi, Annarosa Leri, Francesco Lo Monaco, Marcello Rota, Arantxa Gonzalez, Toru Hosoda, Martino Pepe, Khaled Qanud, Caroline Ojaimi, Silvana Bardelli, Domenico D’Amario, David A. D’Alessandro, Robert E. Michler, Stefanie Dimmeler, Andreas M. Zeiher, Konrad Urbanek, Thomas H. Hintze, Jan Kajstura, and Piero Anversa, which was first published August 27, 2009; 10.1073/pnas.0907622106 (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 106, 15885–15890).
The editors wish to note that, based on the recommendation of Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Brigham and Woman’s Hospital (BWH), we are retracting this paper. The HMS and BWH review of images contained in publications from the P.A. laboratory suggests that image data appeared to be modified in ways determined to fall outside acceptable image adjustment practices. The HMS/BWH found instances of the following: Fig. 1A (Top Left) appears to have areas of c-kit-positive staining selectively inserted into the image plane; Fig. 1A (Bottom Left) appears to have areas of c-kit-positive staining selectively added, as well as the translocation of cells within the image.
May R. Berenbaum
Editor-in-Chief