Oncology Letters

1792-1074 1792-1082

D.A. Spandidos

10.3892/ol.2026.15586

OL-31-6-15586

Expression of Concern

[Expression of Concern] Apoptotic effect of gambogic acid in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cells via suppression of the NF-κB pathway

Liu

Wen-Yue

Liao

Cheng-Quan

Shen

Jie

Jun

062026

14042026

31 6

231

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 11: 3681–3685, 2016; DOI: 10.3892/ol.2016.4437

Following the publication of the above paper, it has been drawn to the Editor's attention by a concerned reader that three pairs of data panels showing TUNEL apoptotic assay data in Fig. 2B on p. 3683 contained overlapping sections, such that images which were intended to show the results from differently performed experiments had apparently been derived from a smaller number of original sources. In addition, western blot data shown in Fig. 4 on p. 3684 were strikingly similar to data that were subsequently submitted to the journals Molecular Medicine Reports and Oncology Letters in articles written by different authors at different research institutes.

The authors have been contacted by the Editorial Office to offer an explanation for these apparent anomalies in the presentation of the data in this paper, and we are awaiting their response. Owing to the fact that the Editorial Office has been made aware of potential issues surrounding the scientific integrity of this paper, we are issuing an Expression of Concern to notify readers of these potential problems while the Editorial Office continues to investigate this matter further.