Retraction Note to: Semaphorin 4D cooperates with VEGF to promote angiogenesis and tumor progression

Excerpt

The Editors-in-Chief have retracted this article [1] following an investigation by the University of Maryland. The institution found that in Fig. 1B and 1D, the cell lines are different and all published histograms show SEMA4D mRNA level whereas Excel data have two histograms showing SEMA4D expression and two histograms showing VEGF expression. In Fig. 2B, the metadata for one image shows different treatment conditions than those reported in the article. The published image labelled “VEGF + VEGFR-2 shRNA” has a metadata label of S4d-plexinB1 shRNA2. In Fig. 2E, statistical significance was shown in the published figure for four comparisons, but upon recalculation, one comparison noted as significant was not. In Fig. 6A, the lower left image is labelled “VEGF shRNA” in the published figure, but the metadata label is “S4DshRNA-HN121-20X”. In Fig. 6C, specifically, within columns 2–4, for each antibody used for immunocytochemistry, the three images have been swapped so that the original images do not match the shRNA labels in the figure (the labels for the two antibodies were correct). In Fig. 7D, the first published image is labelled as “IgG” in the paper, but the metadata show a label of “Restore (V+S).tif”. The third published image has a label of “anti-VEGF IgG”, and the metadata show a label of “con sh.tif”. Due to these errors, the Editors-in-Chief have found that the results are no longer reliable. …