Retraction - Retraction - Long non-coding RNA ANRIL promotes the invasion and metastasis of thyroid cancer cells through TGF-β/Smad signaling pathway

Sep 30, 2026

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Retraction notice for the Oncotarget paper reporting that long non-coding RNA ANRIL promotes thyroid cancer cell invasion and metastasis via the TGF-β/Smad signaling pathway. The editorial team states that multiple internal and external duplications and overlaps were detected, including duplicated or overlapping Transwell assay image panels across figures and between the retracted article and other previously published or later published works. The authors and their institution were contacted but did not respond, leading to the retraction decision.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryHealthcare

FormatPDF

Pages2

Reading Time5 min

AccessFree to download

Retraction Notice

Reasons for Retraction

Contact and Editorial Decision

Original Article and References

[www.oncotarget.com](www.oncotarget.com) Oncotarget, 2025, Vol. 16, pp: 890-891 Retraction Retraction: Long non-coding RNA ANRIL promotes the invasion and metastasis of thyroid cancer cells through TGF-β/Smad signaling pathway Jian-Jie Zhao 1, Shuai Hao 1, Ling-Li Wang 1, Chun-Yan Hu 1, Shu Zhang 1, Ling-Ji Guo 1, Gang Zhang 1, Bo Gao 1, Yan Jiang 1, Wu-Guo Tian 1 and Dong-Lin Luo 1 1 Department of Breast, Thyroid, and Vascular Surgery, Research Institute of Surgery, Daping Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, 400042, P. R. China Published: Deceember 31, 2025 Copyright: © 2025 Zhao et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4. 0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article has been retracted: Oncotarget has concluded its investigation of this paper. Multiple instances of internal and external duplications and overlaps ofTranswell assy images were discovered. These include: Internal Duplications: Figure 5, TPC-1, panel A is a duplicate of SW579 panels A and B, and correspondingly SW579 panels A and B are duplicates too. Figure 5, TPC-1, panel E overlaps with SW579 panel D. Figure 6, TPC-1 panel A overlaps with panel B. External Duplications: Figures 5 and 6 contain panels that overlap with earlier published figures 7 and 12 in already retracted article [1] and Figure 8D in article [2]. Concurrently published papers [3] and [4] also shred images from Figures 5 and 6. And multiple panels from Figures 5 and 6 were found in later published unrelated articles [5–8] . The authors and their institution have been contacted, but neither has responded. Therefore, the Editorial decision has been made to retract the paper. Original article: Oncotarget. 2016; 7:57903–57918. [https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.11087](https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.11087) REFERENCES 1. Li X, Chen L, Wang W, Meng FB, Zhao RT, Chen Y. MicroRNA-150 Inhibits Cell Invasion and Migration and Is Downregulated in Human Osteosarcoma. Cytogenet Genome Res. 2015; 146:124–35. [https://doi.org/10.1159/000437379](https://doi.org/10.1159/000437379). [PubMed]. Retraction in: Cytogenet Genome Res. 2022; 162:95. [https://doi.org/10.1159/000523671](https://doi.org/10.1159/000523671). [PubMed] 2. Liu N, Jiang F, He TL, Zhang JK, Zhao J, Wang C, Jiang GX, Cao LP, Kang PC, Zhong XY, Lin TY, Cui YF. The Roles of MicroRNA-122 Overexpression in Inhibiting Proliferation and Invasion and Stimulating Apoptosis of Human Cholangiocarcinoma Cells. Sci Rep. 2015; 5:16566. [https://doi.org/10.1038/srep16566](https://doi.org/10.1038/srep16566). [PubMed] 3. Wang N, Wang Q, Shen D, Sun X, Cao X, Wu D. Downregulation of microRNA-122 promotes proliferation, migration, and invasion of human hepatocellular carcinoma cells by activating epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Onco Targets Ther. 2016; 9:2035–47. [https://](https://)[ ](https://)[doi.org/10.2147/OTT.S92378](doi.org/10.2147/OTT.S92378). [PubMed] 4. Dong J, Zhang Z, Gu T, Xu SF, Dong LX, Li X, Fu BH, Fu ZZ. The role of microRNA-21 in predicting brain metastases from nonsmall cell lung cancer. Onco Targets Ther. 2016; 10:185–94. [https://doi.org/10.2147/OTT.S116619](https://doi.org/10.2147/OTT.S116619). [PubMed] 5. Li E, Zhao Z, Ma B, Zhang J. Long noncoding RNA HOTAIR promotes the proliferation and metastasis of osteosarcoma cells through the AKT/mTOR signaling pathway. Exp Ther Med. 2017; 14:5321–28. [https://doi.org/10.3892/etm.2017.5248](https://doi.org/10.3892/etm.2017.5248). [PubMed] 6. Guo HM, Yang SH, Zhao SZ, Li L, Yan MT, Fan MC. LncRNA NEAT1 regulates cervical carcinoma proliferation and invasion by targeting AKT/PI3K. Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci. 2018; 22:4090–97. [https://doi.org/10.26355/eurrev_201807_15400](https://doi.org/10.26355/eurrev_201807_15400). [PubMed] [www.oncotarget.com](ww

FAQs

What paper is being retracted?

The retracted Oncotarget paper is titled “Long non-coding RNA ANRIL promotes the invasion and metastasis of thyroid cancer cells through TGF-β/Smad signaling pathway.”

What issues led to the retraction?

The notice reports multiple internal and external duplications/overlaps of Transwell assay images, including duplicated panels within the paper and overlap with images from already retracted and other published articles.

Did the authors respond to the inquiry?

The authors and their institution were contacted, but neither responded, and the editorial decision was made to retract the paper.

Sep 30, 2026

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