miR-188-5p Promotes Tumor Growth by Targeting CD2AP Through PI3K/AKT/mTOR Signaling in Children with Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia [Retraction]

Wang D, Chen J, Ding Y, et al. Onco Targets Ther. 2020;13:6681–6697.

We, the Editors and Publisher of OncoTargets and Therapy, have retracted the following article.

Following publication of the article, concerns were raised about the duplication of images from Figures 2, 3 and 8 with images from other unrelated articles. Specifically,

• The image for Figure 2C, HL60 cell, mimics NC, has been duplicated with the image for Figure 3F, EC18, Vector-UCA1, from Zhu Z, Wang H, Pang Y, Hu H, Zhang H, Wang W. Exosomal long non-coding RNA UCA1 functions as growth inhibitor in esophageal cancer. Aging (Albany NY). 2020;12:20523–20539. https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103911 (RETRACTED).
• The images for Figure 3C, NB4 cell, inhibitors, and HL60 cell, inhibitors NC, have been duplicated with the images for Figure 5C, A549, miR-503+PDK1 from Wei Y, Liao Y, Deng Y, Zu Y, Zhao B, Li F. MicroRNA-503 Inhibits Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Progression By Targeting PDK1/PI3K/AKT Pathway. Onco Targets Ther. 2019;12:9005–9016. https://doi.org/10.2147/OTT.S213059 and Figure 3A, I, from Wu B, Xing C, Tao J. Upregulation of microRNA-23b-3p induced by farnesoid X receptor regulates the proliferation and apoptosis of osteosarcoma cells. J Orthop Surg Res. 2019;14:398. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13018-019-1404-6, respectively.
• The images for Figure 8A, Ctrl+siNC and inhibitors+siNC, have been duplicated with the images for Figure 3A, PC3, sh1, from Zhang T, Sun Y, Zheng T, Wang R, Jia D, Zhang W. MLPH Accelerates the Epithelial–Mesenchymal Transition in Prostate Cancer. Onco Targets Ther. 2020;13:701–708. https://doi.org/10.2147/OTT.S225023, and Figure 4B, A498, si-POSTN, from Jia YY, Yu Y, Li HJ. POSTN promotes proliferation and epithelial-mesenchymal transition in renal cell carcinoma through ILK/AKT/mTOR pathway. Journal of Cancer. 2021;12(14):4183–4195. https://doi.org/10.7150/jca.51253.

The authors did not respond to our queries and were unable to provide an explanation for the duplicated images or provide data for the study. As verifying the validity of published work is core to the integrity of the scholarly record, we are therefore retracting the article and the authors were notified of this.

We have been informed in our decision-making by our editorial policies and COPE guidelines.

The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as ‘Retracted’.