A group of Chinese cancer researchers has retracted a paper in Medical Oncology after they discovered that “several key experiments” were not reproducible.
The paper, “Decreased Warburg effect induced by ATP citrate lyase suppression inhibits tumor growth in pancreatic cancer,” was published in March. It found that suppressing the enzyme ATP citrate lyase could be used to treat pancreatic cancer.
However, the authors decided to pull the paper when some of the findings couldn’t be reproduced.
This article has been retracted by the authors as it was discovered that duplication of several key experiments described herein were not possible because: The difference between acidification of culture medium in si-Ctrl group and si-ACLY could not be observed and the results of lactate production and glucose consumption could not be repeated. The authors regret any confusion caused.
The authors are based at Nanjing Municipal Hospital and Zhangjiagang Wandong Anorectal Hospital.
The journal’s editor-in-chief, Kenneth Pienta, declined to comment or provide additional details about the retraction.
We’ve reached out to the paper’s corresponding author Yehuang Wang, and we’ll update with any comment.
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