Expression of Concern to: Cell Death and Disease (2012) 3, e418; doi:10.1038/cddis.2012.159; published online 15 November 2012

Cell Death and Disease is publishing an Expression of Concern regarding the above-mentioned publication (PMID 23152054).

This paper was first corrected on 7 March 2013 (Cell Death and Disease (2013) 4, e529) after the authors noticed that lanes displaying the actin bands in Figures 1, 5b and Supplementary Figure 1a were not the appropriate actin loading controls.

In May 2013 a reader contacted the Editors, and raised further concerns, namely possible duplications and mirror images in Figure 2b, possible duplication and 180° rotation of one image, and duplication and resizing of another image, in Figure 3.

In response, the Editors wrote to the corresponding author and the authorities at the University of Milan requesting that an investigation be carried out, in which the original images for all of the figures in the paper were obtained and checked to ensure their validity.

The corresponding author has not provided the Editors with the original source files that were used to generate the figures in question, but has provided the Editors with the results of similar experiments.

The Commission that was established by the University of Milan to investigate this issue was not provided the original source files, but instead was provided the results of similar experiments. This Commission concluded that the duplicated and rotated image in Figure 3 was acquired inadvertently, as were the other errors, and the figures were not deliberate misrepresentations of the original data.