Bai J, Jiao WY. Onco Targets Ther. 2020;13:4607–4616.

At the authors request, we, the Editor and Publisher of the journal OncoTargets and Therapy have retracted the published article.

Following publication of the article, the authors raised concerns about the duplication of images from Figures 1, 2 and 3 with images from unrelated articles. Specifically,

The image for Figure 1B has been duplicated with the image for Figure 6A from Li N, Cheng C, Wang T. MiR-181c-5p Mitigates Tumorigenesis in Cervical Squamous Cell Carcinoma via Targeting Glycogen Synthase Kinase 3β Interaction Protein (GSKIP). Onco Targets Ther. 2020;13:4495-4505. https://doi.org/10.2147/OTT.S245254. Images for Figure 1C, Vector, CD44 and Ki67, have been duplicated with images for Figure 6D from Guo X, Lee S, Cao P. The inhibitive effect of sh-HIF1A-AS2 on the proliferation, invasion, and pathological damage of breast cancer via targeting miR-548c-3p through regulating HIF-1α/VEGF pathway in vitro and vivo. Onco Targets Ther. 2019;12:825-834. https://doi.org/10.2147/OTT.S192377 and 7D from Zhu L, Zhang Q, Li S, Jiang S, Cui J, Dang G. Interference of the long noncoding RNA CDKN2B-AS1 upregulates miR-181a-5p/TGFβI axis to restrain the metastasis and promote apoptosis and senescence of cervical cancer cells. Cancer Med. 2019;8:1721–1730. https://doi.org/10.1002/cam4.2040. Images for Figures 2G and 3C have been duplicated with images for Figure 4A from Zhang J, He H, Wang K, et al. miR-326 inhibits the cell proliferation and cancer stem cell-like property of cervical cancer in vitro and oncogenesis in vivo via targeting TCF4. Ann Transl Med. 2020;8(24):1638. https://doi.org/10.21037/atm-20-6830 and Figures 3G and 3L from Hu X, Zou W, Liu D, Qin G, Jiang L. RETRACTED ARTICLE: The Down-Regulation of TrkB Alleviates the Malignant Biological Behavior and Cancer Stem-Like Property of Laryngeal Cancer. Cancer Manag Res. 2020;12:6865-6875. https://doi.org/10.2147/CMAR.S260693. The image for Figure 3A, EDU, pcDNA-ZEB1 has been duplicated with images for Figure 1B from Gong H, Wang L, Zhao J, Wang L, Yu Q, Wan Y. Nitidine chloride inhibits the appearance of cancer stem-like properties and regulates potential the mitochondrial membrane alterations of colon cancer cells. Ann Transl Med. 2020;8(9):591. https://doi.org/10.21037/atm-20-3432 and Figure 4C from Hu J, He L, Wang P, Yu Y, Ye Y, Liang L. Antagonist targeting miR‑106b‑5p attenuates acute renal injury by regulating renal function, apoptosis and autophagy via the upregulation of TCF4. Int J Mol Med. 2021;48:169. https://doi.org/10.3892/ijmm.2021.5002.

The authors were cooperative and responded to our queries but were unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for how the images came to be duplicated or provide satisfactory original data for the study. As verifying the validity of published work is core to the integrity of the scholarly record, the authors requested to retract the article and the Publisher and Editor agreed with this decision.

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”.