Retraction:

Qiang Li^1,*, Han Zhao^1,3,*, Sizhan Xia¹, Hanxiao Wei¹, Feifei Chen² and Peisheng Jin¹

¹Department of Plastic Surgery, Affiliated Hospital of Xuzhou Medical University, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, China
²Jiangsu Center for the Collaboration and Innovation of Cancer Biotherapy, Cancer Institute, Xuzhou Medical University, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, China
³Department of Plastic Surgery, Xuzhou Central Hospital, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, China
^*These authors have contributed equally to this work

Published: May 20, 2025

Copyright: © 2025 Li et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

This article has been retracted: Oncotarget has completed its investigation of this paper. It has been determined that numerous images have been manipulated throughout the paper. More specifically, the immunofluorescent (IF) images in Figure 1D, 3H and 4D are overlapping despite the use of different antibodies (CK18 vs E-cadherin vs RUNX2). Similar overlaps were identified in IF images across Figures 2G, 3H and 3G, as well as Figures 2H, 3G and 4D, where images representing staining with different antibodies at different experimental conditions were overlapped. In Figure 6A, the same image of a mouse appears in the first and last panels for Day 1. The panels in Figure 6C (HE staining) and in Figure 7A (CD31 staining) each contain two overlapping IHC images that are intended to depict different experimental conditions. Given the significant number of duplications and overlaps found within this paper, the editors have concluded that the integrity of the data is substantially compromised, casting doubt on the manuscript's conclusions. Consequently, the editorial decision has been made to retract this paper. The authors were notified of this decision; however, no response was received.

Original article: Oncotarget. 2018; 9:2646-2659. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.23522.