Ren F, Shrestha C, Shi H, et al. Onco Targets Ther. 2020;13;9419-9428.
At the authors request, we, the Editor and Publisher of the journal OncoTargets and Therapy, have retracted the following article.
Following publication of the article, concerns were raised about the duplication of images from another article authored by the first author, Fang Ren. Specifically,
The image for Figure 4H, OVCAR-8, miR-421 mimics, has been duplicated with an image for Figure 4F, MDA-MB-231, anti-miR-374a, from Zhang J, He Y, Yu Y, et al. Upregulation of miR-374a promotes tumor metastasis and progression by downregulating LACTB and predicts unfavorable prognosis in breast cancer. Cancer Med. 2018;7:3351–3362. https://doi.org/10.1002/cam4.1576.
In addition, images for Figure 5D, Lenti-NC group and Lenti-miR-421, Ki-67 have been duplicated.
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 we, 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The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.