Overexpression of ERβ Participates in the Progression of Liver Cancer via Inhibiting the Notch Signaling Pathway [Retraction]

Zhang Y, Yi B, Zhou X, Wu Y, Wang L. Onco Targets Ther. 2019;12:8715–8724.

The Editor and Publisher of Onco Targets and Therapy wish to retract the published article.

We were notified of potential image manipulation in the published article. The issues relate to images shown in Figure 1A, which appear to be duplicated with an image used for Figure 1A from another paper by the same authors published in Pathology – Research and Practice:

Zhang Y, Zhou X, Yin C, Wu Y, Wang L. Overexpression of ERβ inhibits the proliferation through regulating TNG-β signaling pathway in osteosarcoma. Pathol Res Pract. 2019;215(10):152568 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0344033819307836?via%3Dihub).

Our other concerns relate to the alleged duplication of images shown in Figures 3C, 3D, 4A and 6A. Despite repeated attempts to contact the authors, they have not responded to our queries within the required  imeframe. The editor determined the findings of the study were no longer valid and requested for the article to be retracted.

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The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.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