Retraction to: British Journal of Cancer https://doi.org/10.1038/bjc.2015.17, published online 03 February 2015

This article has been retracted by the Editor-in-Chief at the request of the authors following an institutional investigation by the Internal Investigation Committee at the University Health Network. The authors acknowledge the following issues with the article’s data:

  • The top left corner of the panel labelled Control in Figure 2D overlaps with the bottom right corner of the panel labelled PTP in the same figure;

  • The Actin band in Figure 3A is identical to the Actin band in Figure 2E of [1], when re-scaled and flipped horizontally;

The authors therefore no longer have confidence in the integrity of the research presented in this article. Q Tan, A M Joshua, J K Saggar, N Kanga, X Chen, B G Wouters, and I F Tannock agree to the retraction. M Yu and M Wang have not responded to correspondence from the Publisher. The Publisher was unable to contact J Y Zhang.