Ju J, Wang N, Wang J, Wu F, Ge J, Chen F. Drug Des Devel Ther. 2018;12:997-1008.

At the request of the authors, the Editor and Publisher of the journal Drug Design, Development and Therapy have retracted the published article.

Following publication of the article, the authors raised concerns about the duplication of images from Figure 2 with those from an unrelated article and the duplication of images within Figure 8. Specifically,

Images from Figure 2B, MDA-MB-453 and MDA-MB-231, have been duplicated with the same images for Figure 2F and 3I from Dong SR, Ju XL, Yang WZ. STAT5A reprograms fatty acid metabolism and promotes tumorigenesis of gastric cancer cells. Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci. 2019;23(19):8360-8370. https://doi.org/10.26355/eurrev_201910_19147. Images for Figure 8, FL-/siRNA+ and FL+/siRNA-, 0 h; FL-/siRNA- and FL-/siRNA+, 12 h; FL-/siRNA-, 24 h and FL-/siRNA+, 48 h; and FL-/siRNA-, 48 h and FL+/siRNA-, 24 h, have been duplicated.

The corresponding author was cooperative and responded to our queries but was unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for how the images came to be duplicated or provide satisfactory original 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 Publisher and Editor 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The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.