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Nature Medicine has issued an Editorial Expression of Concern regarding a 2010 study on the amplification of LAPTM4B and YWHAZ genes and their role in chemotherapy resistance and recurrence of breast cancer. The concern centers on apparent similarities between Western blot images in Figure 2d, specifically the Cisplatin-treated pro-caspase-3 blots representing two different cell lines, MDA231 and BT549. Due to the age of the article and low image resolution, the editors could not conclusively determine whether image duplication or manipulation occurred, and they advise readers to interpret the affected data with caution.
Why it matters
If the data integrity concerns are confirmed, conclusions about LAPTM4B and YWHAZ as drivers of chemotherapy resistance in breast cancer may need reassessment, potentially affecting research directions and therapeutic strategies built upon this work.
Addendum to: Nature Medicine https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.2090, published online 24 January 2010.
The Editors would like to alert readers that a concern has been raised regarding the similarity of Fig. 2d Cisplat+ pr-cas3 blots representing MDA231 and BT549 cells. These blots appear to share some highly similar features; however, due to the age of the article and the low resolution of available images, we were unable to conclusively determine the extent of this similarity. Readers are therefore advised to interpret these data with caution.
Yang Li, Lihua Zou, Zoltan Szallasi, J. Dirk Iglehart, Andrea L. Richardson and Zhigang Charles Wang do not agree to this Editorial Expression of Concern. Qiyuan Li, Benjamin Haibe-Kains, Ruiyang Tian, Yan Li, Christine Desmedt and Christos Sotiriou could either not be contacted or did not respond to correspondence regarding this Editorial Expression of Concern.
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Li, Y., Zou, L., Li, Q. et al. Editorial Expression of Concern: Amplification of LAPTM4B and YWHAZ contributes to chemotherapy resistance and recurrence of breast cancer.
Nat Med (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-04149-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-04149-w