[Expression of Concern] Downregulation of hepatic lipase is associated with decreased CD133 expression and clone formation in HepG2 cells

Following the publication of the above paper, an interested reader has presented to the authors some queries/concerns regarding a couple of aspects of their study. The first of the reader's queries relates to the isotype control used for the CD133 flow cytometric analysis. It was stated in the Materials and methods section (on p. 2139) that APC‑conjugated anti‑human CD133 antibody (Miltenyi Biotec; cat. no. 130‑090‑826) was used, whereas anti‑mouse IgG (cat. no. sc‑2005) was used as the isotype control; however, the same methods section identified sc‑2005 as a goat anti‑mouse IgG‑HRP secondary antibody used for western blotting. The manufacturer also describes sc‑2005 as an HRP‑conjugated secondary antibody, rather than as an APC‑conjugated mouse IgG1 isotype control; therefore, the authors should clarify the actual isotype‑control reagent that was used in the flow cytometry experiments. The second query relates to the apparent transposition of Gene IDs in Table I. This Table assigned Gene ID 100500882 to CLDN10 (NM_006984) and Gene ID 9071 to MIR3667 (NR_037440); however, the NCBI records indicate that CLDN10 corresponds to Gene ID 9071, whereas MIR3667 corresponds to Gene ID 100500882. Therefore, the two Gene IDs appeared to have been transposed between adjacent rows; the authors should clarify whether this is was merely a table‑formatting error, or whether the incorrect Gene ID mapping was also used in the differential expression, GO and KEGG pathway analyses. The authors have been contacted by the Editorial Office to address these apparent anomalies in the presentation of these details in their paper, and we are awaiting their response. Owing to the fact that the Editorial Office has been made aware of potential issues surrounding the scientific integrity of this paper, we are issuing an Expression of Concern to notify readers of this potential problem while the Editorial Office conitnues to investigate this matter further. [International Journal of Molecular Medicine 42: 2137‑2144, 2018; DOI: 10.3892/ijmm.2018.3756]