Retraction: Gu et al. Lonicerin prevents inflammation and apoptosis in LPS-induced acute lung injury. Frontiers in Bioscience (Landmark Edition). 2020; 25: 480–497

The Editor-in-Chief has retracted the article entitled “Lonicerin prevents inflammation and apoptosis in LPS-induced acute lung injury” [1] due to significant concerns regarding the reliability and integrity of the data presented.

Recently, several issues were brought to the attention of the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief regarding the originality and authenticity of the images in this paper published in 2020 prior to the present publisher and EiC taking over the management of the journal. The content of repeated figures includes but is not limited to:

(1) Fig. 5C contains images that are identical to those in Figure 3C of a previously published paper [2].

(2) Fig. 6C contains images that are identical to those in Figure 3C of a previously published paper [3].

These duplications of images raise serious questions about the validity of the results and the adherence to ethical standards of research. The authors were contacted for an explanation but did not reply. Therefore, the Editor-in-Chief no longer has confidence in the research presented in this work and retracted the article.

References

[1] Gu LZ, Sun H. Lonicerin prevents inflammation and apoptosis in LPS-induced acute lung injury. Frontiers in Bioscience (Landmark Edition). 2020; 25: 480–497. https://doi.org/10.2741/4815.

[2] Wang C, Song X, Li Y, Han F, Gao S, Wang X, et al. Low-dose paclitaxel ameliorates pulmonary fibrosis by suppressing TGF-β1/Smad3 pathway via miR-140 upregulation. PloS One. 2013; 8: e70725. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0070725.

[3] Wang Y, Zhang P, Liu Z, Wang Q, Wen M, Wang Y, et al. CUL4A overexpression enhances lung tumor growth and sensitizes lung cancer cells to erlotinib via transcriptional regulation of EGFR. Molecular Cancer. 2014; 13: 252. https://doi.org/10.1186/1476-4598-13-252.