Search Results for: cell line mix up

“Truly extraordinary,” “simply not credible,” “suspiciously sharp:” A STAP stem cell peer review report revealed

Retraction Watch readers are of course familiar with the STAP stem cell saga, which was punctuated by tragedy last month when one of the authors of the two now-retracted papers in Nature committed suicide. In June, Science‘s news section reported: Sources in the scientific community confirm that early versions of the STAP work were rejected … Continue reading “Truly extraordinary,” “simply not credible,” “suspiciously sharp:” A STAP stem cell peer review report revealed

Contaminated cells force retraction of Blood paper

Blood has an interesting retraction of a 2011 paper on what a group of authors claimed was a new cell line — but which proved, apparently, to be a chimera. The article, “Oxygen-regulated expression of the erythropoietin gene in the human renal cell line REPC,” came from a team at Universität Duisburg-Essen, in Germany, and … Continue reading Contaminated cells force retraction of Blood paper

Wrong cell line leads to retraction of kidney cancer study

A group of authors in China has retracted their December 2013 paper in PLoS ONE after realizing that they’d been studying the wrong cells. The paper, “Up-Regulation of pVHL along with Down-Regulation of HIF-1α by NDRG2 Expression Attenuates Proliferation and Invasion in Renal Cancer Cells,” came from Lei Gao, of the Fourth Military Medical University, … Continue reading Wrong cell line leads to retraction of kidney cancer study

Embryonic stem cell paper retracted for fabrication

Stem Cells and Development has retracted a paper it published earlier this year after the leader of the study reported that the data were unreliable. The paper, “Derivation and Genetic Modification of Embryonic Stem Cells from Disease-Model Inbred Rat Strains,” came from the lab of Aron Geurts, of the Medical College of Wisconsin. According to … Continue reading Embryonic stem cell paper retracted for fabrication

More HeLa problems: For decades, a widely used bladder cancer line hasn’t been what scientists thought

About a year ago, we wrote about the retraction of a paper in Oral Oncology that highlighted a big issue in oncology research: Widespread contamination of cancer cell lines by other lines, making findings difficult to interpret. One of the common contaminants is HeLa cells. HeLa, of course, stands for Henrietta Lacks, the subject of … Continue reading More HeLa problems: For decades, a widely used bladder cancer line hasn’t been what scientists thought

Two retractions for scientist whose work is “not fully supported by the available laboratory records”

The head of immunology at India’s Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Sunil Kumar Manna, has retracted two papers for image problems. Here’s the notice from Cell Death and Differentiation for “Inhibition of RelA phosphorylation sensitizes apoptosis in constitutive NF-kappaB-expressing and chemoresistant cells:”

Bowel cell paper falls to culture confusion

A group of nutrition researchers at the University of California, Davis has retracted their paper in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences for what they describe as a botched experiment involving mixed-up cultures. The article, titled “Dextran Sulfate Sodium Inhibits Alanine Synthesis in Caco-2 Cells,” appeared in 2011 and was retracted in February 2012, although … Continue reading Bowel cell paper falls to culture confusion

You’ve been dupe’d: Catching up on authors who liked their work enough to use it again

As we’ve noted before, we generally let duplication retractions make their way to the bottom of our to-do pile, since there’s often less of an interesting story behind them, duplication is hardly the worst of publishing sins, and the notices usually tell the story. (These are often referred to — imprecisely — as “self-plagiarism.”) But … Continue reading You’ve been dupe’d: Catching up on authors who liked their work enough to use it again

Authors, including highly cited cancer researcher, blame “clerical error” for image mixup in paper

The Journal of Experimental Medicine has issued a correction for a 2011 paper by Michael Karin, a prominent cancer researcher at the University of California, San Diego, after learning about a “clerical error” in one of the figures. According to the notice for the article, “Constitutive intestinal NF-κB does not trigger destructive inflammation unless accompanied … Continue reading Authors, including highly cited cancer researcher, blame “clerical error” for image mixup in paper

The HeLa problem: What a retraction says about whether cancer researchers can trust their cell lines

Retraction Watch readers who’ve read Rebecca Skloot’s bestseller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks may remember that decades ago, scientists began realizing that Lacks’s cells, now known as the HeLa cell line and used in labs around the world, were so good at proliferating that they had taken over many other cell lines researchers use … Continue reading The HeLa problem: What a retraction says about whether cancer researchers can trust their cell lines