Wu C, Yang J, Li R, Lin X, Wu J, Wu J. OncoTargets and Therapy 2021;14:891–904

We, the Editor and Publisher of the journal OncoTargets and Therapy have retracted the published article.

Following publication, concerns were raised regarding the duplication of images from Figure 3C with images from an unrelated article. Specifically,

Images for Figure 3C, NCI-H1975, OverExp-NC, have been duplicated with images for Figure 2f, Control, from Zhu, D., Shi, C., Jiang, Y., Zhu, K., Wang, X., & Feng, W. (2021). Cisatracurium inhibits the growth and induces apoptosis of ovarian cancer cells by promoting lincRNA-p21. Bioengineered, 12(1), 1505–1516. https://doi.org/10.1080/21655979.2021.1916271.

The corresponding author did not respond to our queries and 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 Publisher and Editor requested to retract the article and the corresponding author was notified of 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The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.