MicroRNA-139-3p Inhibits the Growth and Metastasis of Ovarian Cancer by Inhibiting ELAVL1 [Retraction]

Xue F, Li QR, Xu YH, Zhou HB. Onco Targets Ther. 2019;12:8935–8945.

At the authors request, the Editor and Publisher of OncoTargets and Therapy wish to retract the published article. The authors notified the journal that the primers meant for miR-139-3p had mistakenly been designed for miR-129-3p and the conclusions described in the reported study were unreliable. In addition, it was also found that images in Figure 3 had been duplicated. Specifically,

• Figure 3A, OVCAR-3, 0 h, miR-NC appears to have been duplicated with the same image for Figure 3A, OVCAR-3, 0 h, miR-139-3p.

The authors were unable to explain how the incorrect primers came to be designed or how the images in Figure 3A came be to be duplicated. The authors were also unable to provide the original data for their study. The Editor agreed with the authors request 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The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.