A high-profile Canadian urologist received an editorial expression of concern for one of his papers this month, after anonymous comments on PubPeer flagged suspected data duplication in dozens of his articles.
By our count, sleuths have flagged 30 papers co-authored by Martin Gleave, a professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada and co-founder of the Vancouver Prostate Centre. According to the posts on PubPeer, images in these studies appear “much more similar than expected” based on analyses using the similarity detection software ImageTwin. The issues include similarities within individual papers and across multiple publications, with some comments suggesting the alleged reuse of tumor specimens.
Gleave, an appointee to the Order of Canada for his work developing treatments for prostate cancer, has received more than $120 million (approximately $84 million USD) in funding throughout his career, according to his profile on the Vancouver Prostate Centre website. He is also a co-founder of OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals, with several of the findings from the flagged papers connected to the company and related patents.
In an email to Retraction Watch, Gleave stated, “We are taking the comments seriously, and assessing them internally now,” adding it would take “a couple of months to understand and respond to the issues.” He declined to speculate on how the mistakes might have occurred, writing that he couldn’t provide insights “at this time,” but maintained the errors did not affect the findings or conclusions of the papers.
A media representative at the University of British Columbia acknowledged the PubPeer comments, but declined to comment on whether the works were under investigation, stating the university does not “discuss employee matters.”
This month, the British Journal of Cancer, a Springer Nature publication, published an expression of concern for the 2012 paper “Clusterin inhibition using OGX-011 synergistically enhances antitumour activity of sorafenib in a human renal cell carcinoma model.” The paper, a collaboration between Gleave and researchers from Kobe University in Japan, is one of the 30 flagged on PubPeer. It has been cited 36 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
The journal’s notice cites “concerns” about similarities between Western blots meant to represent different experimental conditions. The expression of concern follows a June post on PubPeer in which an anonymous commenter had reported the similarities, which appeared to involve horizontal and vertical resizing of the images. According to the journal, the original data are no longer available, and “Readers are therefore advised to interpret these results with caution.”
Four more of the 30 papers are published in other Springer Nature journals:
- Novel inhibition of AKR1C3 and androgen receptor axis by PTUPB synergizes enzalutamide treatment in advanced prostate cancer, Oncogene, 2023
- Clusterin facilitates stress-induced lipidation of LC3 and autophagosome biogenesis to enhance cancer cell survival, Nature Communications, 2014
- Hsp27 silencing coordinately inhibits proliferation and promotes Fas-induced apoptosis by regulating the PEA-15 molecular switch, Cell Death and Differentiation, 2012
- Heat shock protein 27 confers resistance to androgen ablation and chemotherapy in prostate cancer cells through eIF4E, Oncogene, 2010
A spokesperson from Springer Nature, Alice Kay, confirmed the publisher is “aware of the concerns and [is] looking into them” and said editors would decide on appropriate action once they had established the facts.
Another of Gleave’s papers, “Suppression of Heat Shock Protein 27 Using OGX-427 Induces Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress and Potentiates Heat Shock Protein 90 Inhibitors to Delay Castrate-resistant Prostate Cancer”, published in European Urology in 2014, was corrected in 2016 for mislabeling and duplication of data. But the journal doesn’t appear to have addressed the more recent concerns about additional data duplications.
Several of the papers flagged originated from the lab of Xuesen Dong, a frequent co-author with Gleave and a senior research scientist at the Vancouver Prostate Centre and professor at the University of British Columbia. They include:
- Consensus PP1 binding motifs regulate transcriptional corepression and alternative RNA splicing activities of the steroid receptor coregulators, p54nrb and PSF, Molecular Endocrinology, 2011
- Prostate stromal cells express the progesterone receptor to control cancer cell mobility, PLoS ONE, 2014
- UGT2B17 Expedites Progression of Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancers by Promoting Ligand-Independent AR Signaling, Cancer Research, 2016
- Catalytic inhibitors of DNA topoisomerase II suppress the androgen receptor signaling and prostate cancer progression, Oncotarget, 2015
- Downregulation of c-SRC kinase CSK promotes castration resistant prostate cancer and pinpoints a novel disease subclass, Oncotarget, 2015
- Expression and function of the progesterone receptor in human prostate stroma provide novel insights to cell proliferation control, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 2013
For the first five papers listed above, Dong attributed the errors to students who “inadvertently inserted incorrect images into the figures,” he wrote in an email to Retraction Watch. He explained most of the issues involve Western blots, “which can appear very similar” or originate from “experiments with comparable designs. The images “were often labeled with file names that differed by only one letter or a small detail,” he stated.
“Compounding the issue, many of these incorrect images were part of larger composite figures containing up to 30 subfigures, which made the errors more challenging to identify,” he added. Dong also said the method his lab used to develop Western blots may have contributed to “flipped images being saved and later incorporated into figures.”
Addressing concerns about the final paper in question, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism in 2013, Dong claimed “there is no mistake” in the figure referenced in the PubPeer comment.
According to emails seen by Retraction Watch, Oncotarget contacted Dong in late June regarding “image irregularities” in two of his papers published in the journal. That followed anonymous comments on PubPeer detailing similarities between images earlier the same month.
For the 2015 paper “Downregulation of c-SRC kinase CSK promotes castration resistant prostate cancer and pinpoints a novel disease subclass” published in Oncotarget, Dong echoed the explanation he provided to Retraction Watch. He told the journal manager the project “involved a large amount of immunoblotting assays, and all loading controls looked similar. Therefore the two actin images were mistakenly inserted.” He added, “Regardless, these minor mistakes did not affect the conclusion we have drawn.”
In the case of “Catalytic inhibitors of DNA topoisomerase II suppress the androgen receptor signaling and prostate cancer progression,” another 2015 paper in Oncotarget, the journal pointed out similarities to an earlier publication in Cell Death and Disease. Dong explained that the first author, Haolong Li, had been working on the two publications simultaneously.
“Each project involved a large amount of western blotting assays,” he told the journal. “And all images for the loading controls look very similar and easily misplaced.” No corrections have yet been posted for the Oncotarget papers, and the journal has not responded to requests for comment.
In late November, Dong’s co-authors reached out to the other three journals which published papers containing erroneous data to request corrections, according to emails shared with Retraction Watch. None so far has been corrected.
Another 14 of Gleave’s papers flagged on PubPeer were published in American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) journals, with six of them in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics. In an email, Christine Battle, publisher and vice president of scientific publications at AACR, wrote they would be examining the articles and will correct or retract if required.
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The data don’t affect our conclusions. Yeah, not a scientist.