Abstract
Cancer Biotherapy and Radiopharmaceuticals (CBR) issues a formal Expression of Concern pertaining to the published article in the February 2021 issue of the journal entitled, “CircSMARCA5 Facilitates the Progression of Prostate Cancer Through miR-432/PDCD10 Axis” by Chunhui Dong, Bo Fan, Zongtao Ren, Bin Liu, and Yanchao Wang [2021;36(1):70-83; doi: 10.1089/cbr.2019.3490].
The miR-432 forward primer provided under the section Quantitative Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction appears to be a universal primer and not a primer specific to miR-432. The data derived from the miR-432 primer indicated are likely to be suboptimal and not reflect the true expression level because the sequence is for a reverse primer for miR-432, covering hsa-miR-432-5p. This reaction is highly unlikely to work as the amplification of microRNAs (miRs) the primer is expected to bind to is only up to half of the miR.
Readers are urged to consider this when reading the article as attempts to reach the authors for input, comment, or clarity were not successful.