The article ‘miR-137 Inhibits Proliferation and Metastasis of Hypertrophic Scar Fibroblasts via Targeting Pleiotrophin’ [Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry (2018) 49 (3):1026–1036.; https://doi.org/10.1159/000493236] by Qian Zhang, Bingyu Guo, Qiang Hui, Peng Chang and Kai Tao has been retracted by the current and former Publisher and the Editor.
Following publication, image concerns were raised regarding figures 2, 4 and 5. Specifically, the Western blot panel „vimentin“ of figure 2F in this article seems to also be present in figure 1J panel „PTEN“ of the previously published article [1] by another author group as well as in figure 6E in the panels „Bcl-2“ and „MMP2“ of the previously published article [2] by another author group. Figure 4B „miR-137 mimic“ seems to also be present in figure 5B in the first panel „miR-137 in (-)si-PTN(-)“.
In response to our investigation, the corresponding author sent revised figures and asked for an erratum. When asked to provide raw images and data supporting the figures and tables in the original article, the corresponding author and three co-authors did not respond. The concern could not be raised to the corresponding author‘s institution, as no email address that could definitively be linked to a relevant contact could be found. As the concerns raised about these figures could not be addressed adequately, the reliability of the findings presented in the article cannot be guaranteed and the article is being retracted.
The authors agree with this retraction.
| 1 | He, M., Jiang, L., Li, B., Wang, G., Wang, J., & Fu, Y. Oxymatrine suppresses the growth and invasion of MG63 cells by up-regulating PTEN and promoting its nuclear translocation. On- cotarget. 2017 May 10;8(39), 65100. DOI: 10.18632/oncotarget.17783 |
| 2 | Wang, J., Wang, G., Li, B., Qiu, C., & He, M. RETRACTED: miR-141-3p is a key negative regu- lator of the EGFR pathway in osteosarcoma. OncoTargets and therapy, 2018 Jul 31;11, 4461. DOI: 10.2147/OTT.S171304 |