Retraction Note to: British Journal of Cancer https://doi.org/10.1038/bjc.2013.153, published online 09 April 2013

The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article. After publication, concerns were raised about some high image similarities across publications from the same authors. Specifically:

  • Fig. 2A, Akt (lane 1-4) (786-O) and Fig. 2C, Akt (Caki-2) [1] appear to be highly similar

  • Fig. 2A, Akt (786-O) and Fig. 2A, Actin (H1975) (resized) [2] appear to be highly similar

Additionally, the Caki-2 cell line used in this article was previously misclassified as a renal clear cell line instead of renal papillary cancer cell line [3].

The authors have stated that the mistakes might have occurred in collecting western blot images for different projects. However, the authors could not provide original raw data. The Editor-in-Chief no longer has confidence in the presented data.

The Author Gianpaolo Tortora disagrees with this retraction. The Authors V Damiano, R Rosa, L Formisano, L Nappi, T Gelardi, R Marciano, I Cozzolino, G Troncone, S Agrawal, B M Veneziani, S De Placido and R Bianco did not respond to correspondence from the Publisher about this retraction notice.