OL Oncology Letters 1792-1074 1792-1082 D.A. Spandidos 10.3892/ol.2026.15477 OL-31-4-15477 Retraction [Retracted] Epithelial cell adhesion molecule is overexpressed in hypopharyngeal carcinoma and suppresses the metastasis and proliferation of the disease when downregulated MuYakui SaNa YuLiang LuSumei WangHaibo XuWei 042026 02022026 31 4 124 Copyright: © 2026 Mu et al. 2026 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.

Oncol Lett 8: 175–182, 2014; DOI: 10.3892/ol.2014.2140

Following the publication of the above paper, a concerned reader drew to the Editor's attention that, regarding the western blots shown in Fig. 5, the alpha-catenin panel in Fig. 5A (total protein) appeared to be very similar to the beta-actin panel in Fig. 5B (soluble protein). Upon performing an independent analysis of the data in this paper in the Editorial Office, it also came to light that the immunohistochemical staining images featured in Fig. 1A-C contained apparent anomalies, namely the repeated patternings of small areas of cellular data within the same figure panels.

After having conducted this independent investigation of the data in the Editorial Office, the Editor of Oncology Letters has determined that this paper should be retracted from the Journal on account of a lack of confidence in both the scientific integrity of the data and the accuracy with which certain of the figures were assembled. The authors were asked for an explanation to account for these concerns, but the Editorial Office did not receive a reply. The Editor regrets any inconvenience that has been caused to the readership of the Journal.