LINC00152 Promotes the Growth and Invasion of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma by Regulating miR-139-5p [Retraction]

Li M, Ning J, Li Z, Wang J, Zhao C, Wang L. Onco Targets Ther. 2018;11:6295–6304.

The Editor-in-chief and Publisher of OncoTargets and Therapy wish to retract the published article. Concerns were raised regarding the alleged duplication of images within the article with images from other publications. Specifically:

• The western blot bands for GAPDH in Figure 3C appear to have been duplicated with the western blot bands for β-actin in Figure 4C from Wen et al, 2015 (https://doi.org/10.3892/or.2015.4165) and the western blot bands for GAPDH in Figure 5B from Dong et al, 2016 (https://doi.org/10.3892/or.2016.4604).
• The cell invasion image from Figure 3B panel sh-LINC00152 appears to have been duplicated with the cell invasion image in Figure 2E panel pFER1L4 from Fei et al, 2018 (https://doi.org/10.1159/000495554).
• The tumor images shown in Figure 5B appear to have been duplicated with tumor images in Figure 5B from Qu et al, 2018 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopha.2018.01.024).

The authors responded to our queries but were unable to provide an explanation for the alleged image duplication. The authors agreed with the decision to retract the article.

Our decision-making was informed by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retraction.

The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.

This retraction relates to this paper