Retraction: Tumor growth suppression by inhibiting both autophagy and STAT3 signaling in HNSCC

ATeng-Fei Fan¹,^*, Lin-Lin Bu¹,^*, Wei-Ming Wang¹, Si-Rui Ma¹, Jian-Feng Liu¹, Wei-Wei Deng¹, Liang Mao¹, Guang-Tao Yu¹, Cong-Fa Huang¹, Bing Liu², Wen-Feng Zhang¹,², Zhi-Jun Sun¹,²,

¹The State Key Laboratory Breeding Base of Basic Science of Stomatology & Key Laboratory of Oral Biomedicine Ministry of Education, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
²Department of Oral and Maxillofacial-Head and Neck Oncology, School and Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
³These authors have contributed equally to this work

Published: April 24, 2026

This article has been retracted:Oncotarget has completed its investigation of this paper, which identified several instances of internal image duplication, overlap, and the reuse of images in a later published article by the same group [1], despite representing different experiments:

• Figure 1A: The fluorescence microscopy image (Hoechst 33258 staining) is a duplicate of the image in Supplementary Figure 2A.
• Figure 1D: The Western blot for STAT3 is a duplicate of the STAT blot in Supplementary Figure 2C. This image was also reused in Figure 4B of a 2016 paper by the same group [1].
• Figure 2B: The Western blot for Beclin1 is a duplicate of the pAkt blot in Figure 4A.
• Figure 2D: The Western blots for GAPDH and LC3 are duplicates of the images in Figures 3A, 3C and 3E, respectively.
• Figure 3C: The Western blot for LC3 overlaps with the image in Figure 3E.
• Figure 3E: The Western blot for GAPDH is a duplicate of the image in Supplementary Figure 1B.
• Figure 4A, 4C: The Western blots for GAPDH and Erk1/2 are duplicates of the corresponding images in Figure 4D.
• Figure 5C: The third and fourth IHC images for the p62 stained group overlap; additionally, the second image overlaps with the IHC image for LAMP2 in Figure 6A.
• Supplementary Figure 2A: The Tunnel assay control image (0 uM) overlaps with the 50 uM image.

The authors initially requested a correction; however, given the volume of inconsistencies, they subsequently requested a retraction. The editorial decision has been made to retract the article, and the authors have been notified of this final decision, but have not responded.

REFERENCES

1. Fan TF, Wu TF, Bu LL, Ma SR, Li YC, Mao L, Sun ZJ, Zhang WF. Dihydromyricetin promotes autophagy and apoptosis through ROS-STAT3 signaling in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Oncotarget. 2016; 7:59691–703. https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.10836. [PubMed].

Original article: Oncotarget. 2015; 6:6670-6683. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.6294.