Zhu H, Chen Y, Zhang J, et al. Onco Targets Ther. 2020;13:5479–5491.

At the authors request, we, the Editor and Publisher of the journal OncoTargets and Therapy have retracted the published article.

Following publication, the authors were made aware of concerns regarding the duplication of images from Figures 2, 4 and 7 with images from unrelated articles. Specifically,

The western blot images for Figure 2E, MKN45, GAPDH and Figure 4D, p-ERK1/2, have been duplicated with images for Figure 6e, GAPDH and Figure 5a, smad2/3, respectively, from Han L, Zou Y, Yu C. Targeting CC chemokine ligand (CCL) 20 by miR-143-5p alleviate lead poisoning-induced renal fibrosis by regulating interstitial fibroblasts excessive proliferation and dysfunction. Bioengineered. 2022;13(4):11156–11168. https://doi.org/10.1080/21655979.2022.2062106. Tumor images for Figure 7A have been duplicated with tumor images for Figure 6b from Wang XL, Lu SC, Sun C, et al. Tripartite motif protein 11 (TRIM11), an oncogene for human lung cancer via the DUSP6-mediated ERK1/2 signaling pathway. Cancer Biology & Therapy. 2021;22(4):324–332. https://doi.org/10.1080/15384047.2021.1902912 and Figure 6b from Sun K, He SB, Yao YZ, et al. Tre2 (USP6NL) promotes colorectal cancer cell proliferation via Wnt/β-catenin pathway. Cancer Cell Int. 2019;19:102. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12935-019-0823-0.

The corresponding author was cooperative and did respond 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 corresponding author 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The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.