Molecular Medicine Reports Molecular Medicine Reports 1791-2997 1791-3004 D.A. Spandidos 10.3892/mmr.2026.13966 MMR-34-3-13966 Expression of Concern [Expression of Concern] Chrysophanol inhibits proliferation and induces apoptosis through NF-κB/cyclin D1 and NF-κB/Bcl-2 signaling cascade in breast cancer cell lines RenLi LiZhouping DaiChunmei ZhaoDanyu WangYanjie MaChunyu LiuChun 092026 15072026 34 3 256 Copyright: © 2026 Ren 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.

Mol Med Rep 17: 4376–4382, 2018; DOI: 10.3892/mmr.2018.8443

Subsequently to the publication of the above article, an interested reader drew to the authors' attention that, concerning the western blot data shown in Figs. 4 and 5 on p. 4380, it was unexpected that the authors would have detected cleaved caspase-3 in the experiments performed using the MCF-7 cell line, since it has been shown that MCF-7 cells do not express caspase-3 (for example, see the paper by Reiner U. Jänicke and colleagues entitled “MCF-7 breast carcinoma cells do not express caspase-3.” Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, vol. 117.1 (2009); p. 219–221).

The authors have been contacted by the Editorial Office to offer an explanation for these unexpected findings in their study, 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.