Int J Oncol 45: [Related article:] 2159-2166, 2014; DOI:
10.3892/ijo.2014.2638
Subsequently to the publication of the above
article, a concerned reader drew to the attention of the Editorial
Office and the authors that certain pairings of the GAPDH western
blotting control bands in Fig. 4 appeared to be strikingly similar
to adjacent pairings of bands within the same gel slices; moreover,
data bands featured in the HuT-2, C91-PL and Jurkat zymography
blots in Fig. 5 also appeared to be remarkably similar, both
comparing the bands within a given gel slice (as in the case of the
Jurkat cell experiment in Fig. 5) or comparing between gel slices
(as in the case of the Hut-2 cells compared with the C910PL cells
in Fig. 5).
The Editorial Office independently investigated
these concerns, and reached the conclusion that the bands did
appear strikingly similar; too similar for the appearance of the
bands within these figures to have arisen by chance. Moreover, the
application of a software analysis program revealed that certain of
the data in Fig. 6 had also appeared in another paper published by
several of the same authors in another journal at around the same
time. As a result of this investigation, the Editor of
International Journal of Oncology has decided that this
paper should be retracted from the journal on account of a lack of
confidence in the authenticity of the presented data. The authors
were asked for an explanation to account for these concerns, but
the Editorial Office did not receive a satisfactory reply. The
Editor apologizes to the readership for any inconvenience
caused.
