Retraction to: Oncogene https://doi.org/10.1038/onc.2012.39, published online 13 February 2012

The Editors-in-Chief have retracted this article. An internal investigation by the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center of specific allegations identified that the blots presented in Fig. 1d (pSTAT3 and Flag-STAT3) and Fig. 4a (pSTAT3) appear to show splice marks and erased areas around the bands. As a result of the investigation, Moffitt’s Research Integrity Program recommended retraction of the article to the Publisher.

In reviewing Moffitt’s recommendation, further checks by the Publisher have found additional issues:

  • Figs. 1a and 3a appear to have inconsistent or missing backgrounds.

  • In Fig. 4c, some GAPDH bands appear to have unusually straight edges on the sides.

  • In Fig. 5b, the IKBKE RT-PCR right lane appears to have a different background compared with the rest of the gel.

  • In Fig. 6b, some Cleaved PARP bands appear to have unusually straight edges on the sides.

The Editors-in-Chief therefore no longer have confidence in the presented data.

A. A. Beg agrees to this retraction. J. Guo, D. Kim, J. Gao, C. Kurtyka, H. Chen, C. Yu, D. Wu, A. Mittal, E. B. Haura and J. Q. Cheng have not responded to any correspondence from the editor or publisher about this retraction. The publisher has not been able to obtain a current email address for S. P. Chellappan.