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Open Access

Expression of Concern

Expression of Concern: Apoptosis Induced by Knockdown of uPAR and MMP-9 is Mediated by Inactivation of EGFR/STAT3 Signaling in Medulloblastoma

  • The PLOS One Editors

After the publication of this article [1], concerns were raised about the results presented in Figs 2-4. Specifically,

  • The Fig 2A Daoy GAPDH panel and the Fig 4B D283 Lamin B panel appear similar
  • The Fig 2B D283 Cox IV panel and the Fig 3C Daoy GAPDH panel appear similar

In addition to the above concerns, the Fig 5A Daoy STAT 3 panel in this article [1] appears similar to the Fig 3C β-actin panel in [2, retracted in 3] and the Fig 6 AKT panel in [4]. PLOS note that [2, retracted in 3] and [4] were published later by researchers that do not appear to share affiliations with the authors of [1].

The authors did not respond to the journal’s communications.

The PLOS One Editors issue this Expression of Concern to alert readers of the panel overlap concerns affecting Figs 2-4, which call into question the reliability and validity of the published results.

References

  1. 1. Kotipatruni RR, Nalla AK, Asuthkar S, Gondi CS, Dinh DH, Rao JS. Apoptosis induced by knockdown of uPAR and MMP-9 is mediated by inactivation of EGFR/STAT3 signaling in medulloblastoma. PLoS One. 2012;7(9):e44798. pmid:22984561
  2. 2. Liu S, Zhang W, Liu K, Wang Y, Ji B, Liu Y. Synergistic effects of co-expression plasmid‑based ADAM10-specific siRNA and GRIM-19 on hepatocellular carcinoma in vitro and in vivo. Oncol Rep. 2014;32(6):2501–10. pmid:25242535
  3. 3. Liu S, Zhang W, Liu K, Wang Y, Ji B, Liu Y. [Retracted] Synergistic effects of co-expression plasmid‑based ADAM10-specific siRNA and GRIM-19 on hepatocellular carcinoma in vitro and in vivo. Oncology Reports. 2021;47(2):24.
  4. 4. Zhang H, Li Z, Wang K, Ren P. Combined treatment of XIAP-targeting shRNA and celecoxib synergistically inhibits the tumor growth of non-small cell lung cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. Oncology Reports. 2014;33(3):1079–88.

Citation: The PLOS One Editors (2025) Expression of Concern: Apoptosis Induced by Knockdown of uPAR and MMP-9 is Mediated by Inactivation of EGFR/STAT3 Signaling in Medulloblastoma. PLoS One 20(7): e0328377. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0328377

Published: July 15, 2025

Copyright: © 2025 The PLOS One Editors. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.