miR-302 Cluster Inhibits Angiogenesis and Growth of K562 Leukemia Cells by Targeting VEGFA [Retraction]

Cao J, Li L, Han X, et al. Onco Targets Ther. 2019;12:433–441.

At the authors request, the Editor and Publisher of OncoTargets and Therapy are retracting the published article. The authors were made aware of data concerns relating to their paper and an investigation found images in Figure 5 had been duplicated with those from Yang C, Zheng J, Xue Y, Yu H, Liu X, Ma J, Liu L, Wang P, Li Z, Cai H, Liu Y. The Effect of MCM3AP-AS1/miR-211/KLF5/AGGF1 Axis Regulating Glioblastoma Angiogenesis. Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience. 2018; 10:437 (https://doi.org/10.3389/fnmol.2017.00437). Specifically,

• From the published article, Figure 5E, pcDNA 3.1, pcDNA 3.1-VEGFA; pcDNA 3.1-VEGF+miRNA NC; pcDNA 3.1-VEGFA+miR-302a mimics; pcDNA 3.1-VEGFA+miR-302b mimics; pcDNA 3.1-VEGFA+miR-302c mimics and pcDNA 3.1-VEGFA+miR-302d mimics have been duplicated with images in Figure 2F, Control and anti-miR-211; Figure 6E, Control; Figure 2F, pre-NC and anti-NC; Figure 4E, KLF5 (-)-NC and Figure 6E, AGGF1 (-)-NC, respectively from Yang et al, 2018.

The authors advised that data relating to the original study was no longer available and they were unable to explain how the images came to be duplicated. As the validity of the published work cannot not be verified the Editor and Publisher have agreed to retract the article.

We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions.

The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.