Expression of Concern: Induction of the Death-Promoting Gene bax-α Sensitizes Cultured Breast-Cancer Cells to Drug-Induced Apoptosis

C. Wagener, R. C. Bargou, P. T. Daniel, K. Bommert, M. Y. Mapara, H. D. Royer, and B. Dörken, “ Induction of the Death-Promoting Gene bax-α Sensitizes Cultured Breast-Cancer Cells to Drug-Induced Apoptosis,” International Journal of Cancer 67, no. 1 (1996): 138–141, https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0215(19960703)67:1<138::AID-IJC22>3.0.CO;2-9.

This Expression of Concern is for the above article, first published on 3 July 1996 and available in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), and has been published by agreement between the journal Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Christoph Plass; the Union for International Cancer Control; and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. The Expression of Concern was agreed due to concerns about the Western Blot bands in Figure 1 and Figure 2.

The Western Blot shown in Figure 2 was also included as Figure 3 in another publication by this author group [1]. However, this other publication was not cited.

In Figure 1, the Western Blot bands for Bcl-2 and Bcl-xL look very similar to the tubulin bands in the right panel of Figure 3 in Bargou et al. [1] (tubulin for “bax” in MCF-7 and for “bax” in R30C, respectively). The authors are unable to retrieve the original data underlying this experiment due to the time that has elapsed and state that they cannot rule out inadvertent mislabelling of the figure.

As these issues cannot be definitively resolved, the journal is publishing this Expression of Concern to alert readers. The authors R. C. Bargou and K. Bommert agree to this Expression of Concern. C. Wagener, P. T. Daniel, M. Y. Markus, H. D. Royer, and B. Dörken were not reachable.