Abstract
Hoffmann MJ, Koutsogiannouli E, Skowron MA, et al. The New Immortalized Uroepithelial Cell Line HBLAK Contains Defined Genetic Aberrations Typical of Early Stage Urothelial Tumors. Bladder Cancer. 2016; 2(4): 449-463. doi:10.3233/BLC-160065
Sage was alerted by a reader about potential concerns with two of the panels in Figure 2. Sage was also made aware of a PubPeer conversation highlighting the same concerns. Sage contacted the authors with the above concern and with the additional concerns identified during the investigation. The author responded to all the queries as provided:
The authors acknowledged that an incorrect image was included in the published version of the article as the same image was unintentionally inserted twice during the revision process. The authors note that the PD/TZ protocol induces only very weak morphological changes, as stated in the main text, which may have contributed to the error not being detected at the time. The authors provided the correct partial figure for figure 2 panel b which is replaced in the article and provided at the end of this notice.
The authors noted that the image displays results from an agarose gel electrophoresis and that as the gel chambers used were not large enough to accommodate all samples in one row, they were loaded using two combs but arranged in one row in the image to facilitate comparison. The original gel image was provided for review and was considered satisfactory in addressing the concern. In the article, the figure will appear as supplementary figure 1A and is provided at the end of this notice.
The author stated that the image displays western blot results for three different proteins that run on the same gel and detect successively with antibodies. Images of the stained blots were then obtained by a specialized visualization instrument. The regions containing the specific bands from each round of detection were cut out and displayed. The authors provided the complete raw image to demonstrate that cropped sections correspond with the full raw images. In the article, the figure will appear as supplementary figure 1B and is provided at the end of this notice.
The Journal Editor confirmed that the changes to the figure do not change the overall conclusions that can be drawn from this article. The authors apologize to the readers for this inadvertent error.
