RETRACTED ARTICLE: Long Noncoding RNA NEAT1 Promotes Cell Proliferation And Invasion And Suppresses Apoptosis In Hepatocellular Carcinoma By Regulating miRNA-22-3p/akt2 In Vitro And In Vivo

This paper has been retracted.

Zhou X, Wang X, Zhou Y, Cheng L, Zhang Y, Zhang Y. Onco Targets Ther. 2019;12:8991–9004.

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

Following publication of the article, concerns were raised about the duplication of images from Figures 3, 4, 7 and 9 with images from other unrelated articles. Specifically,

• Images for Figure 3C have been duplicated with images for Figure 7E from Chen D, Huang Z, Ning Y, Lou C. Knockdown of LINC02471 Inhibits Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma Cell Invasion and Metastasis by Targeting miR-375. Cancer Manag Res. 2020;12:8757–8771. https://doi.org/10.2147/CMAR.S243767.
• Images for Figures 3D, 4F and 7D have been duplicated with images for Figures 2G and 5G from Wang L, Zhang J. Exosomal lncRNA AK139128 Derived from Hypoxic Cardiomyocytes Promotes Apoptosis and Inhibits Cell Proliferation in Cardiac Fibroblasts. Int J Nanomedicine. 2020;15:3363–3376. https://doi.org/10.2147/IJN.S240660 and Figure 2A from Sun W, Wu Y, Gao M, et al. C-reactive protein promotes inflammation through TLR4/NF-κB/TGF-β pathway in HL-1 cells. Biosci Rep. 2019;39(8):BSR20190888. doi: https://doi.org/10.1042/BSR20190888.
• Images for Figure 7C have been duplicated with images for Figure 4C from Yu G, Wang W, Deng J, Dong S. LncRNA AWPPH promotes the proliferation, migration and invasion of ovarian carcinoma cells via activation of the Wnt/β‑catenin signaling pathway. Molecular Medicine Reports. 2019;19:3615–3621. https://doi.org/10.3892/mmr.2019.10029.
• Images for Figure 9A have been duplicated for images from Figure 7C from Shi L, Wang Z, Geng X, Zhang Y, Xue Z. Exosomal miRNA-34 from cancer-associated fibroblasts inhibits growth and invasion of gastric cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. Aging (Albany NY). 2020;12:8549–8564. https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103157.

The authors did not respond to our queries and were unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for the duplicated images or provide satisfactory 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”.