Zhang X, Xu L, Yang T. Onco Targets Ther. 2020;13:877-888.

At the author’s request, we, the Editor and Publisher of the journal OncoTargets and Therapy, have retracted the following article.

Following publication, the authors were made aware of concerns relating to similarities between the data presented in their article and the data reported in other published articles from unrelated author groups. Further investigation found images in Figures 3 and 5 were duplicated with images from these other published articles. Specifically,

Images for Figures 3A and 5E have been duplicated with images for Figure 2A from Xu P, Zhang G, Sha L, Hou S. RETRACTED: DUSP1 alleviates cerebral ischaemia reperfusion injury via inactivating JNKMff pathways and repressing mitochondrial fission. Life Sciences. 2018;210:251-262. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lfs.2018.08.049. Images for Figure 5E have been duplicated with images for Figure 3F from Zhang L, Li S, Wang R, Chen C, Ma W, Cai H. RETRACTED: Cytokine augments the sorafenib-induced apoptosis in Huh7 liver cancer cell by inducing mitochondrial fragmentation and activating MAPK-JNK signalling pathway. Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy. 2019;110:213-223. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopha.2018.11.037 and Figure 4E from Lu K, Liu X, Guo W. Melatonin attenuates inflammation-related venous endothelial cells apoptosis through modulating the MST1–MIEF1 pathway. J Cell Physiol. 2019;234:23675–23684. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcp.28935

The authors responded to our queries but were unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for the duplicated images or provide satisfactory data for the study. As verifying the validity of published work is core to the integrity of the scholarly record, the authors requested to retract the article and the Editor and Publisher agreed with this decision.

We have been informed in our decision-making by our editorial policies and COPE guidelines.

The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.