Abou-El-Naga AM, Mutawa G, El-Sherbiny IM, Mousa SA. Int J Nanomedicine. 2018;13:8153-8164.
The Editor and Publisher of International Journal of Nanomedicine wish to retract the published article. Concerns were raised regarding the alleged manipulation of gel electrophoresis images in Figure 6A which appeared to show the bands had been spliced together.
The authors responded to our queries and confirmed the original gel images had been spliced for clarity. However, the authors were unable to provide the original data for the gel electrophoresis experiments and could not verify the original results or findings. The decision was made to retract the article and the authors agreed with this.
We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions.
The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.