Cancer biology group notches sixth retraction, and earns an Expression of Concern

A group at the University of Texas Southwestern that retracted five papers last year has retracted one more, and has had a paper subjected to an Expression of Concern at the request of the school’s dean.

Here’s the retraction notice for “DNA methylation-associated inactivation of TGFβ-related genes, DRM/Gremlin, RUNX3, and HPP1 in human cancers,” originally published in the British Journal of Cancer and cited 51 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge:

An Internal Review Committee at UT Southwestern Medical Center found evidence of improper manipulation and replication of figures in this paper. A subsequent review by Dr Gazdar and his staff has independently confirmed the Committee’s findings.

In this paper, the GAPDH loading controls, specifically Figures 1A and B (p. 1030), appear to be identical to Figures 1A and B published in a subsequent paper (Suzuki et al, 2007). The authors have therefore recommended the retraction of the manuscript to the Editor-in-Chief of British Journal of Cancer.

Dr Suzuki, Dr Gazdar and their co-authors sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused the readers of the British Journal of Cancer.

The team had another paper retracted from the same journal earlier this year, “Aberrant methylation of SPARC in human lung cancers.” That paper, which group leader Adi Gazdar told us last year would be retracted and was one of the five we counted then, was cited 45 times. Here’s the notice:

An Internal Review Committee at UT Southwestern Medical Center found evidence of improper replication of figures in this paper. A subsequent review by Dr Gazdar and his staff has independently confirmed the Committee’s findings. In this paper, the GAPDH loading controls, specifically lanes 4–12 of Figure 1A and C (p 944), appear to be identical. The authors have therefore recommended the retraction of the manuscript to the Editor-in-Chief of British Journal of Cancer.

Dr Suzuki, Dr Gazdar and their co-authors sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused the readers of the British Journal of Cancer.

Similarly, here’s the retraction notice for a Clinical Cancer Research paper Gazdar had said would be retracted, “DNA methylation profiles of lymphoid and hematopoietic malignancies:”

The authors wish to retract the article titled “DNA Methylation Profiles of Lymphoid and Hematopoietic Malignancies,” which was published in the May 1, 2004, issue of Clinical Cancer Research (1).

After a thorough institutional investigation, it was concluded that there was incontrovertible evidence of improper manipulation of figures. It seems that the GAPDH loading controls of Fig. 1B—CDH13 and Fig. 1B—DcR1 (p. 2931) were created by manipulating (cropping of various lanes) Fig. 1A of the referenced article. Dr. Takao Takahashi has accepted the responsibility for Fig. 1B.

That paper has been cited 54 times.

Finally, here’s the new Expression of Concern for a paper that first appeared in Cancer Biology & Therapy:

The Editors were recently provided information regarding evidence of image manipulation in a research paper published in Cancer Biology & Therapy in 2002. Uncertainty exists as to the impropriety of the manipulation. The publisher was notified by the senior author at the request of the Dean of Southwestern Medical School to publish an Expression of Concern regarding “Differential Inactivation of Caspase-8 in Lung Cancers” (10.4161/cbt.1.1.45), a research paper by Narayan Shivapurkar, Shinichi Toyooka, Michael T Eby, Chun Xian Huang, Ubaradka G Sathyanarayana, H Thomas Cunningham, Jyotsna L Reddy, Elizabeth Brambilla, Takashi Takahashi, John D Minna, Preet M Chaudhary, and Adi F Gazdar. The allegations concern Figure 3. The original published figure is shown here:

The evidence provided regarding image manipulation is shown here:

The paper has been cited 76 times.

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